Art Rotterdam 2025: Soloshow Thomas Kuijpers

What happens when an image is more familiar than the place it represents? When memory is shaped not by direct experience but by its countless reproductions? In his latest project, presented at Art Rotterdam 2025, Thomas Kuijpers explores these questions through a deep engagement with Claude Monet’s iconic water lily pond. Captivated by how the painting had overshadowed his memory of the actual garden, Kuijpers embarked on a two-year journey of photographic documentation, using an early digital camera—the 1997 Sony Mavica—to investigate the tension between repetition, perception, and technological mediation. In an era where algorithms dictate visual consumption, this project challenges the way images are remembered and asks: What does it mean to see truly?

When Thomas Kuijpers first visited the water lily pond at Claude Monet’s house in Normandy, it left a lasting impression. However, the memory that endured was not of the physical place itself but of a painting—Monet’s iconic depiction of the bridge over the pond. The image of the painting was stronger than the recollection of the actual location.
Perhaps this was due to the painting’s omnipresence throughout life—on calendars, in books, on mugs, shopping bags, and kitchen aprons. It was only later that the realization struck: the remembered painting was not a singular work but part of a series of 48 versions, 24 of which are considered completed. While repetition resonated—variations on the same image, each subtly different, blending into a singular perception, Kuijpers began to visit and photograph the garden throughout the year.

With the advent of photography, painting evolved. As photography provided a faster and more precise means of capturing reality, painters like Monet saw room to move away from realism. An opposite contemporary tension can be drawn with the way data is handled today. More than a century after Monet’s masterpieces were created, Thomas Kuijpers stood in the same spot, holding a piece of early digital technology—a 1997 Sony Mavica camera, which stored images directly onto floppy disks. The images were of low quality, with flat colors, strange contrasts, and a resolution of just 640x480 pixels. These were not just photographs but data—valuable not for their visual fidelity, but for their ability to be distributed instantly.

In contrast to the algorithm-driven consumption of images today, which prioritizes constant novelty, true engagement with an image often comes from repetition. Looking at the same thing repeatedly, discovering subtle changes over time, and understanding the rhythm of transformation—these are aspects of perception that have now largely been outsourced to algorithms that shape viewing habits based on user behavior.

Over two years of photographing Monet’s garden, Kuijpers rediscovered the significance of repetition: the same journey, the same road, the same garden. What first felt monotonous soon revealed intricate changes—the shifting hues of trees, evolving landscapes, seasonal transformations. Flowers bloomed in waves, lilies opened later on cold days, and in winter, free from tourists, the now-replica bridge stood fully exposed before slowly being enveloped by wisteria again in spring.

This project invites visitors to reflect on the power of repetition, memory, and perception in the digital age. Through a reexamination of Monet’s legacy, it raises questions about how images are consumed, remembered, and transformed over time.

PREVIEW: Thursday 27 March, 11.00 – 16.00 hrs, Invitees only

OPENING NIGHT: Thursday 27 March, 16.00 – 21.00 hrs, Invitees only

PUBLIC OPENING DAYS: Friday 28 – Sunday 30 March, 11.00 – 19.00 hrs