PROPAGARTA // Thom Oosterhof: „Our body becomes a sort of tapestry of experience, physical, mental and emotional. Personal and shared”

IOMO Gallery hosts the exhibition In the Body Lies the Truth, curated by Thom Oosterhof. Based in Amsterdam and voted a „Curator to Watch in 2024” by FollowArt, Oosterhof has coordinated international projects and is recognized for championing the next generation of artists across global markets. We spoke with him about the curatorial vision behind this project, the selection of the nine international artists, and how the raw detail of the body becomes a universal language.

Andreea Busuioc in conversation with Thom Oosterhof:

The exhibition is built on the premise that „the truth lies in the body” In an era of AI and digitally manipulated imagery, how do you see the role of painting and physical form in preserving this „untouches” truth?

The first thing to acknowledge is that the very art of painting is false. Painting a still image can never be ‘true’, thus the exhibition holds this contradiction at its heart. But it is through acknowledging this that we can open the space to appreciating its attempt to get as close to the truth as possible. Through human touch and conscious effort, the artist invests in the medium, nothing comes for free. So to recognize that often telling the truth is harder than a lie is important to remember.

Brancusi said that what is real is the essence of things. In your selection for IOMO, the artists seem to update this notion of essence: they don’t seek the truth through simplification, but through the power of raw detail. Were you specifically looking for artists who transform the particular – a vein, a texture, or a glance – into a universal language of the body?

Exactly! You notice that all of these artists carry this emotional charge within their depictions of the body. What was important was how each differed rather than their similarities. Even through the act of cropping, which you see a lot in the show, is an instant distillation of a moment, of an image, of a feeling. If an artist can charge a work with as much, if not more, feeling than that of a complete image, they are really onto something. I hoped to bring together great examples of just that, and I’m pretty thrilled with the outcome!

Beyond the obvious presence of figurative art, what was your „invisible” criterion in choosing these nine artists? Were you looking for a specific vulnerability in the brushstroke, or perhaps a capacity to capture the body outside of its social „performance”?

I love that word vulnerability. All of the artists in this exhibition are vulnerable in their own way, on different scales. Simply the act of creating and presenting as an artist already creates a degree of vulnerability. Will they like it? Will it sell? Will it hold up next to the other artists? The funny thing is that this vulnerability never goes away for an artist – it is often what drives them. But you are right, I wanted to bring together moments that seemed outside of the ‘social performance’, moments of quiet, of ‘resting faces’, where figures are almost caught unaware that they are being observed. This combination runs as a central thread through the show.

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