Miko Veldkamp
b. Paramaribo, Sr
Based in Brooklyn, NY
Bio
Miko Veldkamp (Miquel Rianto Veldkamp) is a Dutch-American painter of mixed Dutch-Indonesian ancestry. He was born in Surinam, grew up partly in The Netherlands and has been living in NYC for the past ten years. Veldkamp amalgamates cultural and visual elements from each place he has called home, into a dream-like world that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries. In doing so he reflects on race, privilege and historical relations. Applying light washes of colour and layering them to create varying degrees of translucency, the figures in his paintings often resemble himself, family members, or ghost-like entities. These shape-shifting and translucent pseudo- self portraits interact with each other in different roles, occupying a continually evolving psychological landscape of bicycles, dairy cows, nightclubs, checkered floors, forest spirits, tobacco and coca leaves. Playful, sensitive, dreamy and lucid, Veldkamp paints directly onto the canvas without preliminary studies or drawings, allowing the work to unfold spontaneously for the viewer. Parts of his paintings are intentionally left unrendered, allowing a glimpse into the process of building up of the paint and conveying a sense of time passing, creating portals into different cultural spheres.
He was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and a recipient of the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and in 2021 he graduated from the Hunter College MFA painting program. Recent exhibitions include: 'Finding my Blue Sky', group show Lisson Gallery, London (2025), ‘Buketan', Alice Amati, London (2024); ‘Postcards from Home’ BB&M Gallery, Seoul (2023); ‘Confetti in the Shade’, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York (2023); ‘Long Distance’, Long Story Short, New York (2023); ‘Botany of Desire’, group show, Swivel Gallery, New York, (2023); ‘Just Play’, group show, The Here and There, New York, (2023); ‘Second Nature’, Southwark Park Galleries, London (2022); ‘Ghost Stories’, Workplace, London (2022); His work was recently featured in Artforum, New American Paintings, ArtMaze Magazine, Metropolis M and Juxtapoz amongst others.
Solo shows
2026 (forthcoming) clubhouse, JvdW Gallery, Dusseldorf, DE
2024 Buketan, Alice Amati Gallery, London, UK
2023 Postcards from Home, BB&M Gallery, Seoul, KR
2022 Second Nature, Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK
2022 Ghost Stories, Workplace Gallery, London, UK
Duo shows
2023 Confetti in the Shade, duo show with Sangram Majumdar, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY
2023 Long Distance, duo show with Kate Bancroft, Long Story Short NYC, New York, NY
Group shows
2025 Finding My Blue Sky, curated by Omar Kholeif, Lisson Gallery, London, UK
2025 Paper Matters, BB&M Gallery, Seoul, KR
2024 Teach me how to fish, curated by Will Leung, Art Intelligence Global, Hong Kong
2024 The 7th Wall, curated by Jeanette Bisschops, Alice Amati Gallery, London, UK
2023 Botany of Desire, curated by Sadaf Padder, Swivel Gallery, New York, NY
2023 Just Play, The Here and There, New York, NY
2023 Decoy, Workplace Gallery, Newcastle, UK
2022 Viscereal, curated by Saša Bogojev, Althuis Hofland, Amsterdam, NL
2022 Kaleidoscope, Workplace Gallery, London, UK
2022 Dream Life, curated by Dan Cameron, BB&M Gallery, Seoul, KR
2021 The privilege of getting together, Regular Normal at Swivel Gallery, NYC, US
2021 In the Wake, Hunter MFA thesis show, 205 Hudson Gallery, New York, NY
2020 Once more with Feeling, UCLA New Wight Biennial, UCLA, LA
Art fairs
2025 NADA Miami, group presentation with Alice Amati Gallery, Miami, FL, US
2025 Untitled Art, Houston, duo presentation with Abigail Dudley, with Alice Amati Gallery, Houston, TX, US
2025 Frieze, Seoul, group presentation with BB&M Gallery, Seoul, KR
2024 Frieze, Seoul, group presentation with BB&M Gallery, Seoul, KR
2022 Armory Show, duo presentation with Olivia Jia, with Workplace Gallery, New York, NY
Grants, residencies and education
2021 Dedalus Fellowship (nominated)
2018 - 2021 MFA Studio Art, Hunter College, New York, USA
2016 Van Bommel Van Dam Prize, Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo, NL (nominated)
2015 Hodder Fellowship, Lewis Centre for the Arts, Princeton University, USA
2014 CCA Andratx, Mallorca, ES
2013 & 2012 Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, NL