Manifestations of Optimism is a show of monumental red and black ink drawings. Sylvie Zijlmans and Hewald Jongenelis connect in a somehow anarchistic yet humoristic way day to day situations to bigger political and social  issues.
Some drawings are based on Rorschach Inkblots from where a fantasy male or female figure sprouts.They are avatars, personifications of the issue in question. The Collector comes to collect, Zondeman is bowing and praying and Truth conveys that everything stays for ever the same while Hope itself has no limits to optimism concerning the truth. Linguistic misunderstandings from an era in which reality surpasses every fiction.
These drawings are a metaphor for our time and spur people into action. They invite us to view existing ideas in a new light.

Zijlmans (NL, 1964) and Jongenelis (NL, 1962) recently had a solo The Magnetic North & The Idea of Freedom in the large Bodon galleries of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam; a theatrical installation based on everyday life in the rapidly changing suburb Amsterdam-Noord of expanding Amsterdam. It was an artwork inspired by local issues that could have arisen anywhere in which a series of bizarre phenomena came to light. Must everything remain the same for ever? When is a place full? Who has to go?