Review draft — nothing on this page is live
Upgrade for curators: six changes
Each point shows what is on the site now and what I propose. Yellow marks facts only you can supply. Nothing goes live until you approve it point by point; hidden works stay in the database.
01
Edit The Natural World to 10 works
The strongest images are the ones where water, sky and light dissolve into colour. The literal nature shots (fern, mountain, rocks, surf) pull the series back toward travel photography. Ten works, sequenced as one day from first light to night, give the series a clear position.
Now
17 works, including Usnea (no image). Faded = proposed to hide.
Proposed
Hidden from the site, kept in the database: Fern, Serene, Emotional Chaos, Interplay of Light, seascapes, Bloom, Usnea. Bloom is the closest call; it could return in a later chapter.
02
Full work details on every work
A curator reads the caption before the image. Medium, size and edition show the work exists as finished objects. I can only lay this out; the facts have to come from you, in the Artlogic database.
Now
01 Dawn
Proposed
Dawn, 2025
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
100 × 75 cm
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Gallery practice: one or two sizes per work and the same edition structure across the series. Price stays off the site ("Enquire").
03
Collections: say what it is, keep six
The current list reads as museum collections but these are library copies of Paradise. Stating it plainly protects your credibility, and six strong names say more than sixteen.
Now
Collections & research libraries
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam — Research Library
Catalogue
Rijksmuseum — Research Library
Catalogue
Museum Voorlinden — Art Library
Tel Aviv Museum of Art — Art Library & Research
Catalogue
… 16 entries in total
Proposed
Paradise in research libraries
Paradise (Komma, 2020) is held in the research libraries of the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, the Getty Research Institute, Yale University's Haas Arts Library and the Library of Congress.
Each name links to its catalogue record. The full list stays in the bibliography PDF.
04
One story, told the same way everywhere
The homepage and bio still describe the body in landscape, while the current series is landscape only. The bridge is the strongest version of your story: the figure has left the frame. The bio also says "films", and no films are shown.
Now
Homepage
The body, and the trace it leaves in nature, even when it is no longer in the frame.
About, first paragraph
…His photographs and films explore the relationship between the human body and landscape, and the traces a body leaves in nature, even when it is absent from the frame.
The Natural World page
No text.
Proposed
Homepage
The figure has left the frame. What remains is light, water and weather.
About, first paragraph
Ruben van Schalm (b. 1988, Rotterdam) is a Dutch visual artist working between New York, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. For years he photographed the body in landscape. In his current series, The Natural World, the figure has left the frame; what remains is light, water and weather, looked at until it becomes colour.
The Natural World — statement at the top of the series page
The Natural World (2023–ongoing) begins where Paradise ended, in the landscapes where Van Schalm once photographed the body. Here the figure is gone. What remains is the place itself at the hours when it is least solid: first light over water, the last light on a shore, the dark after sunset. Long looking reduces each scene to its atmosphere, until sea and sky become bands of colour and a horizon becomes a line of light. The series is sequenced as a single day, from dawn to night.
"Films" removed unless you want to show a film; if so, it gets its own place on the site.
05
Lead with your work, not other names
Olaf is a real relationship and stays. The Makos / Warhol / Haring / Brandhorst sentence is about other artists; in the bio it reads as borrowed prestige. It moves to the press list, where it is simply a fact.
Now
About, third paragraph
In 2024 his portrait of the American photographer Christopher Makos was featured in Art Magazine's coverage of Museum Brandhorst's Keith Haring & Andy Warhol – Party of Life. In 2025 his work appeared in Fisheye magazine and in Eyes on the World (Kamira Institute, Paris), and he was a finalist in the Lucie Foundation's Hidden Beauty Open Call.
Proposed
About, third paragraph
In 2025 his work appeared in Fisheye and in Eyes on the World (Kamira Institute, Paris), and he was a finalist in the Lucie Foundation's Hidden Beauty Open Call.
Selected press (unchanged line, stays)
2024 Art Magazine / Museum Brandhorst — Party of Life
06
A CV that is exact, not bigger
At this stage the CV wins by precision. Exhibitions come first and say what they were; the book and its libraries follow. No claims a curator could see through.
Now
Selected exhibitions
Monograph
Group publications
Selected press
Recognition
Collections & research libraries (16)
Proposed
Selected group exhibitions
Recognition
Monograph
Group publications
Selected press
Paradise in research libraries (6)
Same rule for the CV PDF so the site and the PDF match. What really grows the CV happens off the site: a solo show, an institutional group show, a museum acquiring a print (not the book), a critical essay on the work.
Reply with OK, or changes, per point · 01–06
