Image: Beelden aan Zee, The Hague
Museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague will present ‘Ex Machina’, an exhibition of new work by the artist and musician Peter Zegveld, from 27 January to 27 June 2027. Curated by Sjarel Ex, the presentation will extend across the Kabinet, Zeezaal and Cinema.
Zegveld, born in The Hague in 1951, will show a series of sculptures and installations involving kinetic forces, shadow, illusion and absurdism. The exhibition describes a practice in which technology and imagination merge, and in which the unexpected repeatedly comes to life. Its stated subject is also a play between vulnerability and what is inevitable or yet to come.
The show concentrates a practice that has ranged across visual art, theatre, music, television, performance and installations in public space. Zegveld combines memories, associations and unexpected connections; construction and imagination, control and chance are recurring coordinates in his work. Museum Beelden aan Zee situates the artist within a lineage that includes Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely, while describing his oeuvre as distinct in its own right.
‘Ex Machina’ signals a change of emphasis from several of Zegveld’s earlier projects, which foregrounded large gestures, spectacle and public intervention. The museum cites a drive-through theatre made of containers on the A6 and an action painting using explosives among those projects. The new exhibition instead focuses on a concentrated experience of the moment and on smaller-scale, no less intense perception.
A 2019 work, ‘Massa’, is identified in the exhibition’s imagery as a kinetic work with projection and sound.
