Booth 6C-03

Location: Brussels Expo, Belgium

PLUS-ONE Projects will present a solo presentation by Dutch artist Daan Couzijn at Art Brussel 2025

In Daan Couzijn’s artistic practice, both the desire for and the questioning of authenticity are central. He explores the tension between the romantic notion that artists should strive for authenticity and the postmodern conviction that everything builds upon what has already been created. By re-using and fragmenting existing images and objects, Couzijn investigates how visual conventions — the unwritten rules that shape our perception — not only define authenticity but also determine value.

Couzijn works conceptually and employs various media, ranging from sculpture and painting to video and installation. His work is fueled by a broader reflection on visual culture(s) and the philosophical theories that emerge from it — particularly regarding how images are produced, reproduced, and interpreted. One example is the idea that images do not have a fixed origin but circulate within a network of references. Recently, he used this principle as a starting point for the series of oil paintings, 'Thinking of Holland,' in which he collaborated with computer technologies and a professional forger to challenge the way in which the Dutch landscape is anchored in certain collective memories as a nationalist symbol.

Daans most recent project, ‘Please Take Nothing But Memory’, – presented at Art Brussels 2025 – specifically examines the mechanisms by which society determines what is valuable and when something loses its meaning. These dynamics become visible in auction houses, where valuation is in constant flux. Here, possessions change hands due to inheritance, financial necessity, or shifting tastes. At the same time, auction houses are spaces where buyers re-evaluate historical objects and speculate on their future market value.

For years, Couzijn has been collecting unique objects together with his friend Christian Herren, an art historian — from a birchwood astronomer’s chair from 1873 to a reliquary containing a bone fragment of a saint’s arm. What began as a shared passion for tracking down rare finds has evolved into a deep-rooted fascination with the stories these objects carry. The interest is not solely in their material beauty or rarity but, above all, in the traces of time and use embedded in each piece. Behind every object lies a history of ownership, loss, and rediscovery — a history that becomes tangible in auction houses.

Within this framework, Couzijn creates a series of new sculptural works that expose and undermine conventional mechanisms of valuation. Through auction houses, he collects antique objects and artworks that seem to have lost their value because they are sold at low prices. What fascinates Couzijn is how these objects can acquire new meaning through transformation.

By modifying them and reassembling fragments, they become detached from their original context. At the same time, echoes of their past remain visible, making the transformation tangible. What was considered ‘old’ or ‘worthless’ in the auction house gains a renewed presence — not through restoration, but through transformation.

Couzijn often associates authenticity with craftsmanship because it implies a direct, physical relationship between the maker and the material. For this reason, he deliberately chooses objects and works of art that have been created with artisanal mastery, as they embody a form of authenticity that he himself cannot achieve, but that he romanticizes. Through his artistic interventions, he aims to invite the viewer to approach these objects from a different perspective, hoping they will be reappreciated.

By integrating elements of their original form into new sculptural assemblages, Couzijn highlights the shifting valuation they have undergone over time.

For the modification of these objects, Couzijn developed a technique — deeply respectful of both the craftsmanship with which they were created and the field of restoration — that focuses on pigment migration.

By removing the varnish and accumulated grime from a historical painting, he creates the possibility to extract a superficial layer of pigment using chemical extraction or transfer techniques, absorbing it into another canvas. In this way, a fragment of the ‘aura’ of the original work is transferred. This artistic intervention pushes the original image to the edge of recognizability, causing the object to balance between decay and newly created value. This research is conducted in collaboration with NICAS (The Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art, and Science) and Agnes Brokerhof (a restoration expert at the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science). While restoration is typically aimed at preservation, Couzijn experiments with techniques that partially reverse that process — not to destroy, but to create space for a new, meaningful layering. The canvases into which the pigments have migrated are then mounted into antique objects he collected — such as a trumeau or a fireplace screen — embedding the extraction within a new, hybrid whole.

The manipulation of these objects makes the perception of value elusive, as the status of the works constantly shifts between different systems of valuation. They exist at the intersection of art and residual material, between heritage and waste. With the tension between reinterpretation and appropriation, they acquire a new status within the exhibition space: what was once discarded is temporarily recognized as an artwork. Their presentation in an artistic context initiates this shift, while the interventions of modification and assemblage influence the way they are perceived and interpreted. This reveals that value is not only a material attribute but, above all, a cultural construct.

Couzijn collects antique objects through auction houses in the locations where they are exhibited, creating a direct connection to local history while also serving as time capsules of that specific place. After the exhibition, these works will return to the auction houses, disrupting the stability of their newly acquired status. Within an artistic context, they are recognized as authentic artworks, but once they return to the auction, they lose their privileged position and become part of an undifferentiated mass of objects. Consequently, they may re-enter different levels of the valuation system — ranging from an auction catalog to a thrift store or flea market.

This process reveals how an object's appreciation is not inherent but is continuously shaped by the context in which it circulates, and the meaning attributed to it.

With special thanks to Anton Venhuizen.

Daan Couzijn (°1994) lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Paris, France.

Couzijn is a queer, interdisciplinary and conceptual artist currently based in Amsterdam and Paris.

Central to his artistic practice is the romantic desire for – and the questioning of - authenticity. He uses a range of media and techniques to express his ideas; from sculpture and painting to video and installation. He draws inspiration from a range of sources, including philosophy, literature, visual culture. By combining different contextual elements, he creates new meanings and narratives that speak to the complexities of contemporary life. Couzijn his practice was recognised by the renowned Mondriaan Fund in 2021 when he received the Artist Start grant.

Couzijn is broadly oriented and active within the creative field. Besides working as a visual artist, he is a trained vocalist/performer, a guestcurator for exhibition space Melkweg Expo, a member of the advisory committee at The Creative Industries Fund (Stimuleringsfonds) in Rotterdam and the Amarte Foundation in Amsterdam, a contributing writer for Marres House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht, a lecturer at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and a guesttutor at the Sandberg Institute (Gerrit Rietveld Academy) as well as ArtEZ University of the Arts.