Willehad Eilers

Willehad Eilers (b. 1981) lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Eilers also works under the pseudonym Wayne Horse. Beginning his career in the German graffiti scene, Eilers later went on to graduate from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (NL) before attending the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (NL). His eclectic body of work is distinctive for its lyrical quality, playful humour, and expressiveness. Describing his practice as an investigation of the heuristically learnt political and cultural mores that define contemporary society, Eilers gently nudges us towards a poetic realisation of our social selves through his highly performative range of paintings, installations, videos, and drawings. Infused with a mischievous, effortless confidence, Eilers’ crude-style works offer us anthropological insight into his observations of the flawed human condition and its perpetual evolution. He unflinchingly presents us with images that convey the disposition of the modern individual towards grotesque, even masturbatory obsessions. He assails the quotidian situations that we are familiar with and renders them unrecognisable.

Eilers’ work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum Jan Cunen (Oss, NL), Concordia (Enschede, NL), Galerie Droste (Paris, FR), and Harlan Levey Projects (Brussels, BE), to name a few. His work has been featured in group shows at The Institute of Contemporary Arts - ICA (London, UK), the Stedelijk Museum (Breda, NL), the Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse (Lille, FR), De School (Amsterdam, NL), Centraal Museum (Utrecht, NL), Kunsthal Rotterdam (NL), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt - HKW (Berlin, DE), the Venice Biennale (IT), and many others. His video work has been screened at various festivals, including the International Documentary Film Amsterdam - IDFA (NL), Kasseler Dokfest (Kassel, DE), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (CH), Pictoplasma (Berlin, DE), and the Portland Underground Film Festival (US). His work has been acquired by the Lisser Art Museum (Lisse, NL), the Hunting group collection, the Green Family collection (Dallas, US), and Colección SOLO (Madrid, ES) among others. Since 2019, he has been regularly publishing his zine, The Horse Diaries.