Jessica Kuhn — 'what is love' at Night Gallery
- Jul 28
- 2 min read
Location: Night Gallery, Shelter Amsterdam, A'DAM Toren
Date: July 30 – September 19, 2026
Project: 'what is love', first solo exhibition by Jessica Kuhn
Why it Matters: Night Gallery's first show built around a single artist, staged inside a nightclub
Night Gallery runs inside Shelter, a club in the A'DAM Toren with around 100,000 visitors a year. Founder Noah Kurstjens started the program to put art in front of people who wouldn't otherwise walk into a gallery. This is the sixth show, and the first one built around a single artist.
The title comes from the Haddaway song, the one from "A Night at the Roxbury." Kuhn uses it as a way into romantic rescue: Jack and Rose from Titanic, and the old argument about whether there was room for both of them on that door. Also the Cinderella Complex, the theory that girls grow up on stories where a prince shows up and fixes everything.
Lions show up too. Kuhn calls it "dancing with lions," the push and pull between wanting to be saved and wanting to prove you don't need it. Male lions have long stood for strength and power, and she keeps coming back to the tail as a way of undoing that.
Kuhn trained at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam and is currently studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag. Her practice moves across painting, performance and installation. In 2023 she staged an unauthorized performance in the public passage beneath the Rijksmuseum during the museum's Vermeer show, painting over her own copy of the painting in public.
'what is love' runs through September 19.
More info: Night Gallery
