With the Hidden Bar, TENT breaks the format of an exhibition stand and creates a place for meetings, where lots of Rotterdam art can be seen. The social and informal atmosphere of a bar is traditionally the ideal meeting place for artists, writers, and intellectuals to enjoy a drink and discuss art.
The abstract expressionists gathered in the legendary New York bar The Cedar Tavern, where Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock met Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. In the famous Parisian cafe Les Deux Magots, a rendezvous with the literary and intellectual elite was almost inevitable. Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Hemingway, Camus, and Picasso were regularly found drinking and conversing here. Amsterdam’s art world can be found in Café De Pels, where the Dutch literati meets, and ideas for exhibitions are born. And now, an artist’s bar in Rotterdam, nestled in the heart of art commerce, the Art Rotterdam art fair.
TENT has invited curator Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, the young collective of the Blu Heron Social Club, and artist Remty Elenga to develop a concept for a presentation of Rotterdam artists. The result is a collective interpretation of the space, a visual conversation between various works of art, in which the social function of a bar is combined with the presentation of young artistic talent from Rotterdam, and the occasional performance in the bar. Artist Mette Sterre will grace the Hidden Bar’s opening, on Wednesday 5 February, with a special performance. The Hidden Bar is run by De Jongens Ronner. They’ll be serving Maallust beer – brewed in the jail village of Veenhuizen – for which they are also shareholders.

Remty Elenga – Art for your Appetite
Working with the title Art for your Appetite, the young video artist Remty Elenga (1987) chose artists from her generation working with a wide range of techniques. Dennis de Bel, Daan den Houter, Anique Weve, Claire Lubeek, Pim Top, Rufus Ketting and Benjamin Li, show video, performance, photography and installation works. Elenga, who graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy, has exhibited at Rotterdam’s Showroom MAMA and Galerie Frank Taal, KOP in Breda and W139 in Amsterdam.

Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk – The Cedar Tavern
Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk (1988) makes reference to New York’s famous The Cedar Tavern, which served as the Abstract Expressionists’ meeting place in the fifties. For The Hidden Bar, Lekkerkerk chose to meet with young abstract painters from Rotterdam – Jeffrey Dunsbergen, Sussanna Browne, and Willem Besselink – and examine the renewed interest in abstract painting that has dominated the trading floor in recent years.
Lekkerkerk is curator of the Marrakech Biennale’s Within the Sound of Your Voice project (2014) and the group exhibition Dans Cinquante Ans d’Ici in Les Territoires in Montreal. In 2012 he received the NEON Curatorial Award from The Whitechapel Gallery for his literature-based approach to curating. As of July, he is curator-in-residence at Schloss Ringberg.

Blu Heron Social Club
Founded in 2013 by a group of artists from Rotterdam’s Piet Zwart Institute, The Blu Heron Social Club is inspired by the artistic salons of yesteryear. Every month, the club organizes an evening of art and performances at Café M’n Schoonmoeders in Delfshaven. The Blu Heron Social Club sees its artistic practice as inseparable from the cafe. In The Hidden Bar hangs a portrait of Esther, the owner of Café M’n Schoonmoeders. There will be periodic one-on-one performances of ‘Dregwhisking’ by the artist Kymberly Ward.

Mette Sterre – Barfly
In an almost abrasive and offensive manner, Mette Sterre (1983) creates uproar with her performance ‘Barfly’. Inspired by the 1987 movie of the same name about the poet, writer, and heavy drinker Charles Bukowski, she’ll be in the bar and busying herself around at the fair. Sterre is a costume designer and performance artist. She is doing her MA in Performance Design & Practice at Central Saint Martins. Sterre has exhibited and performed in Kunsthalle Charlottenbourg, Copenhagen, Woodmill, London, IAMTK, Berlin, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.