Within his previous work de Meijer often referenced western heroism, comics and blockbuster movies. The Last two series were mainly based on the notion of balance between what’s morally accepted within todays western society and what we’ve been conditioned to believe is good and bad. Playing with these notions de Meijer creates visual narratives that not neccesarly provide the viewer with a straight forward answer, but rather create more confusion.
By doing so de Meijer provokes a gut feeling of slight mistrust and flirts with a nihilistic approach as part of the ongoing debate that he as an artist has with his surroundings he lives in.

The serie “Fake Smile” is based upon this same debate. Starting from portrait photography that de Meijer took from himself wearing a variety of masks and disguises he plays with the omni present topic of personality in a digital age. The portraits could be interpreted as avatars used in social media, the new digital world were people only tend to show a certain part of them self’s and by doing so create their own new kind of personality. Questions of how to interpret love, physical contact, attraction, violence and human interaction are the core of this new series of work.

The exhibition is a collaborative project between The Wayward Gallery, based in London and Kind Regards, based in Amsterdam.  The collaboration feels as a logical step within the growth process of Kind Regards. In the past we focused on our Amsterdam audience to provide them with a good and strong selection of artists. During this process we crossed paths with The Wayward Gallery and instantly realised there were many complimentary aspects between the two organisations.