Lumen Travo Gallery

We are delighted to invite you to the opening of the third and final chapter of our 40 Years Anniversary exhibition. “Back and Forth and Back Again – Part 3” closes a trilogy in which we have looked back at the history of artworks, conversations and exchanges built over four decades of Lumen Travo Gallery. After a first chapter dedicated to politically engaged practices and a second focused on playful and provocative works, we widen the horizon for this final instalment, stepping into a more existential and philosophical dimension. This closing chapter explores our relationship with nature – both nurturing and implacable – and the relentless exploitation of the natural world. More introspective than the preceding sections, it reflects on our place within a fragile ecosystem, drawing on history, philosophy and the broader human condition. Artists Dennis Adams, Tiong Ang, Matea Bakula, Razia Barsatie, Cláudia Cristovão, Yvonne Dröge Wendel, Rini Hurkmans, Remy Jungerman, Kristiina Koskentola, Otobong Nkanga, Daniel de Paula, Jens Pfeifer, Hans Scholten, Joseph Sassoon Semah and Judith Westerveld find a space here where their multidisciplinary practices are woven together, allowing meaningful connections and revelations on life and the afterlife to emerge. What do we leave behind when we are gone? Where some perceive darkness and oblivion, these artists find opportunity for new life to rise again. The selected works share a fragility of existence and an ancestral quest for meaning.

To mark its 40th anniversary, Lumen Travo Gallery presents a group exhibition that honors the gallery’s legacy and celebrates its deep-rooted influence on Amsterdam’s contemporary art scene since the early 1980s. Over the span of five months, the gallery will showcase a series of evolving presentations, including iconic works from its history and pieces from the collection of founder Marianne van Tilborg. Following a successful first part dedicated to radical and politically engaged works, the anniversary exhibition resumes after the Christmas break with a new presentation. Focused on the more playful and provocative side of the gallery’s programming, this new chapter brings together works by Guillaume Bijl, Rombouts & Droste, Dianne Hagen, Evelyn Jansen, Hans Klasema, Rik Lina, Aldert Mandje, Emiel van Moerkerken, Nathalie du Pasquier, Luigi Serafini, Skal, Joost Swarte and Huub van Vroonhoven. Many of the artists presented share a vision that connects directly to the gallery’s early beginnings. The exhibition evokes the spirit of the late 1980s: an atmosphere of salon-style surrealism, cigarettes, philosophy, and a euphoric exchange of ideas, when different practices came together in the first location of the gallery, Marianne van Tilborg’s apartment in Amsterdam’s Spuistraat. Join us for the opening day on Friday, 16 January, 17:00–19:00 hrs. At 18:00 hrs artist Dianne Hagen will present a live reading of three poems – “What’s Up”, “And Thus”, and “Time”. The exhibition will run until 28 February 2026.