September 26 - December 26, 2026
Robbin Heyker
The Forgeries
Robbin Heyker, Untitled(Katz), 2026, acrylic paint on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
"I alter facts in such a way as to make them conform to truth more than to reality."
—André Gide, The Counterfeiters
"The great thing about life is that Jensen can develop the most complex computer chip in the world that nobody can copy for 10 years, but he can’t figure out how to put me on speaker phone."
—Donald J. Trump
Okra-Homa Projects presents The Forgeries, a solo exhibition by Dutch artist Robbin Heyker.
The Forgeries marks the culmination of Heyker’s ongoing investigation into repetition, authorship, and the paradoxes of authenticity. The exhibition traces its conceptual lineage to Fugazis - a project originally planned for another space that was abruptly shelved following the space's closure. Reclaiming this interrupted trajectory, Heyker turns to self-imitation not as a retrospective exercise, but as an active, destabilizing painterly strategy.
Central to the exhibition’s logic is a reinterpretation of elements from Heyker’s 2024 solo project The River at C5CNM, where the spatial installation was dictated by the sequential order of a poker hand, accompanied by magician’s props elevated on raw cardboard pedestals. Translating these mechanics of chance, sleight of hand, and calculated illusion into the architecture of Okra-Homa Projects, Heyker presents a new (psych) body of site-responsive paintings.
By deliberately repainting his own past works, Heyker shifts focus from the demand for novelty toward the raw immediacy of the brushstroke itself. In doing so, The Forgeries proposes a central thesis: true forgery is ultimately impossible. Bound to a new moment, scale, and spatio-temporal context, every act of repetition inevitably gives rise to something entirely new. Positioned simultaneously as artist, copyist, and forger, Heyker exposes the fluid boundary between memory, deception, and renewal.
Robbin Heyker, The River 2, 2026, acrylic paint on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
Robbin Heyker, Untitled (Gingko)(Forgery 3), 2026, acrylic paint on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
Robbin Heyker (b. 1976, Leiderdorp, The Netherlands) lives and works between The Hague and Beijing. He received his formal artistic training at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, where he studied Graphic and Typographic Design before turning to painting. Heyker’s painterly practice is grounded in a restrained economy of means, exploring abstract composition, spatial games, and systemic gesture. Drawing conceptual impetus from diverse sources - ranging from birdwatching and sleight-of-hand magic to typography and historical modernism. His canvases employ direct, visible brushwork to foreground the immediacy of the painting process.
His work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions at venues including C5CNM(Beijing), m.simons(Amsterdam), Galería Alegría(Barcelona/Madrid), CCA Andratx (Mallorca), CLC Gallery Venture (Beijing), and Billytown (The Hague). In addition to his studio work, Heyker frequently engages in collaborative, artist-run, and curatorial projects across Europe and China.
Robbin Heyker, Untitled (Forgery), 2026, acrylic paint on canvas,
200 x 160 cm
Robbin Heyker, Untitled (Forgery 2), 2026, acrylic paint on canvas,
200 x 160 cm
Robbin Heyker, Untitled (Original), 2026, acrylic paint on canvas,
100 x 80 cm
Thanks to the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Stroom Den Haag for their generous support.
Robbin Heyker, Untitled (Forgery), 2026, acrylic paint on canvas,
150 x 120 cm
