Monique Schumacher
Monique SchumacherOver six months ago W139's guest space was demolished during the renovation of the Blaauwlakenblok. The empty lot has since been used to store construction materials. The building, known as W131, has a colourful history and in the seventies was home to a transvestite bar-cum-pizza parlour.
The ' amputated' villa on the corner of the Warmoesstraat and Sint Anna alleyway had been used to accommodate artists exhibiting at W139 since the early eighties. In 2003, the Irish artist Katie Holten put the guest rooms to another use. Her project Beta Vulgaris turned W131 into a temporary exhibition space, when she planted a herb garden in the house and presented fictional archaeological finds from the neighbourhood in the back room.
After the murder of Theo van Gogh, a, until now, mysterious painter spontaneously painted a portrait of the film maker on the building&Mac226;s boarded up windows, transforming the site into a memorial.
On 1 August 2005 the bare patch of land left by the demolition of W131 again became a presentation space. Painter Monique Schumacher (The Hague, 1957) is exhibiting five misty-mysterious oil portraits there. Schumacher paints faces in extreme close-up using a kind of sfumato technique. She conjures the illusion of depth and volume be applying numerous layers of semi-transparent paint to wood panel. The insistent gaze of Schumacher&Mac173;s models compels passers by absorbed in the bustling business of the lively Warmoesstraat to stop and pause for a moment contemplation. For more about Schumacher';s work, visit http://www.moniqueschumacher.nl