Draden met een echo by Berend Strik

In his new exhibition Threads with an Echo, Berend Strik explores the layers within images. By combining photography with textiles, he disrupts the fixed meaning of a photograph and creates space for new interpretations. The interplay of memory and material evokes an intimate, almost tangible experience: the image is not only seen but also felt.
 

31/10/2025 - 15/12/2025

Free

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The Exhibition is visible 24/7.

Exhibition Opening

Friday October 31 2025
Walk-In 16:30
Opening 17:30

Join us for a toast in celebration of the exhibition.

Will you be there?

Hotel Arena Oosterpark ’s-Gravesandestraat 55 1092 AA Amsterdam

Let us know, if you will be there

Draden met een echo by Berend Strik
Hotel Arena

The works of Berend Strik consist of photographic images that he alters with textiles and various stitches. By covering certain parts and emphasizing others, a new image emerges that balances between revealing and concealing. Strik investigates how memories, context, and history within an image can be broken open and reinterpreted.

Within his long-running series Deciphering the Artist’s Mind, Strik reflects on his position as an artist in relation to art history and society. The studio functions as a place of origin: a space where images are dissected, transformed, and reassembled. His technique makes the creative process visible, every stitch and line contributes to the meaning.

The unexpected combination of photography and stitching engages the viewer’s gaze: the work invites association, reconstruction, and discovery. This gives rise to an autonomous visual world in which shared memories, personal references, and universal themes converge.

“As a photographer, I capture; as an image manipulator, I liberate the image. Only then does the photograph gain the value of an autonomous entity, present in the here and now,” Strik explains.

About Berend Strik

Berend Strik, based in Amsterdam, grew up in Nijmegen. From 1985 to 1988, he studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. After graduating, he participated in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York.

Strik works across a variety of media, including embroidery, video, photography, architecture, and theater. He has exhibited regularly at venues such as Galerie Fons Welters in Amsterdam and the Tilton Gallery in New York, and more recently at Hopstreet Gallery in Brussels. His work has also been shown in several museums, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

A record of his most recent projects is published in Deciphering the Artist’s Mind, released by Mercatorfonds.