Willem de Rooij

His razor-sharp analyses of existing conventions of presentation and representation culminate in spatial installations in which he uses his own work, that of other makers or art-historical objects to create a field of tension between the politico-social and the autonomous production of meaning. 

Transculturalism has his particular interest. In 2010, for example, he combined a group of paintings by Melchior d'Hondcoeter with some 18th-century feather masks from Hawaii for his installation 'Intolerance' at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. 

His versatile work includes film, sculptures, installations and artists' books and can be found in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and MoMA in New York. 

De Rooij studied art history at the University of Amsterdam and fine art at the Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He won the Charlotte Köhler Prize and the Bâloise Art Prize in 2000, and was a Robert Fulton Fellow at Harvard University in 2005. Together with Jeroen de Rijke, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Since 2006, he has taught at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main.