Solo exhibition
Pieter de Vlam
Fig. 1
The Quiet Inventory
— installation view, After Hours, Rotterdam
Exhibition label
Dates
14.03 – 31.08.2025
Rooms
R1 · R2 · R3
Opening
Fri 14 Mar 2025, 20:00
On the wall
34 paintings, 9 inventory books
Curator
Maud Ilić
Press release
Thirty years of paintings of the Koelhuis, by the man who guarded it. The first exhibition in the restored building.
Rotterdam, February 2025. After Hours opens in the restored Koelhuis on the Maashaven with The Quiet Inventory, a survey of thirty years of paintings by Pieter de Vlam, the cold store's last night watchman.
Every room he painted, hung in the room he painted.
From 1982 to 1993 de Vlam walked the building every night with a torch and an inventory book, logging temperatures and pallets of frozen fish. When the store closed he kept painting it from memory. The exhibition hangs thirty-four of those paintings back in the rooms they show, beside the inventory books he kept.
The Quiet Inventory is curated by Maud Ilić. It is accompanied by a facsimile of the 1991 inventory book, published with Nachtboek Press.
On the wall · selected works
Three works, three labels.
Every label in the building follows the same order: number and room, title, medium, size, and who it belongs to. A red dot means it has found a home.
Cat. 07 · R1
Room 6, Inventory Night, 1998
Oil on board
122 × 160 cm
Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Cat. 12 · R2
The Door to Freezer 3, 2004
Oil on canvas
90 × 70 cm
Collection of the artist
Cat. 31 · R3
Empty, 1994–2024
Oil on 30 boards
40 × 50 cm each
Private collection, Schiedam
Installation views
AI-generated demo imagery
Artists in this exhibition
Around the exhibition
Events.
Tours, talks and Late Friday sets connected to this show. Most are small; booking is through the desk.
No events announced yet.
Book a place: desk@afterhours.gallery · +31 10 214 0700
Next in the programme
06.03 – 28.06.2026