Ordinary Sentiments

With: Helene Appel, Renske van Enckevort, Bonnie Ogilvie, Emma Sebregts, Elise van Staveren and Maria van der Togt.

Silver works by Elise van Staveren

Gallery van Fanny Freytag invites you to the opening of Ordinary Sentiments, a group exhibition in which material functions as a carrier of memory, time, and touch. The exhibition presents works by Helene Appel, Renske van Enckevort, Bonnie Ogilvie, Emma Sebregts, Elise van Staveren and Maria van der Togt and opens on Friday January 23 at 17:00.

In this exhibition, objects are not neutral things but quiet repositories of human gestures. Traces of making, using, and living together are embedded in their forms. By attending to these everyday materials, space for reflection unfolds: the ordinary becomes not a passing moment, but something to return to, especially when life urges acceleration, progress, and renewal.

A guiding image in the exhibition is that of the folding fan, as described by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. According to him, the world does not reveal itself all at once, but unfolds through repeated movements of opening and closing. Like memory, these movements of the fan continuously fold and unfold, without a fixed endpoint. Just as thoughts take their own course while washing the dishes, it is small, familiar actions that shift attention and momentarily interrupt the everyday.

The works of the participating artists invite a slowing down. They share a sensitivity to time, tactility, and material intimacy. Familiar materials or objects take on the quality of talismans: carriers of daily life that do not forget, but preserve what often goes unnoticed. In this way, the artworks become tactile archives in which touch and time are embedded.

In Ordinary Sentiments, each work creates its own moment of stillness, a gentle interruption, like the fold of a fan, before opening again to offer space for meaning-making. The exhibition shows how the everyday, in its smallest movements, can continually reorder how the world appears.

We look forward to welcoming you to the gallery on January 23 at 17:00