Saturday 16 March 2024

Sabina Timmermans / Vincent van Gogh


Vincent van Gogh 

Garden of the Asylum

1889

oil on canvas

72 x 91cm

image: Van Gogh Museum





Vincent van Gogh 

Tree Roots

1890

oil on canvas

50,3 x 100,1 cm

image: Van Gogh Museum





Van Gogh’s final painting Tree Roots, served as the inspiration for a series of charcoal drawings I worked on for a year, called Caressing and Colliding - Sharing the Land.  The location where Van Gogh likely encountered these roots and trunks was discovered the year before my residency at the Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert in 2021. They were situated on a slope alongside a small street in Auvers-sur-Oise. According to a dendrologist, these roots and trunks were from coppiced trees, a form of forestry where new growth is repeatedly cut back for use. Some argue that Van Gogh expresses the struggle of life and death with this. 

 

My aim for the residency was to connect his final painting and the place of his death, with the place where Van Gogh's life began, Zundert. While exploring the forests around the Vlaamse Schuur where I stayed, I looked for similar shapes symbolizing the struggle for life and death. Initially, I searched for the coppiced trees I knew were there, but I became increasingly intrigued by the numerous surface tree roots from old beech trees. In my drawings, I envisioned them as bodies shaped by their life-long interaction and entanglement with their surroundings; with soil, wind, water, humans and other organisms. 

 

I gained a deeper understanding of how Van Gogh perceived nature, due to this residency. With new interest, I revisited his letters and his paintings depicting nature. I was captivated by how Van Gogh's trees transcend mere imagery, seeming to spring to life, imbued with a soul,  as if they are speaking to you. It’s only since then that I read in his paintings the profound connection Van Gogh felt with nature, how he felt at one with it. I strongly resonate with this sensation, and it serves as a significant inspiration for my own artistic practice.

 

Sabina Timmermans, 2024





Sabina Timmermans

Caressing and Colliding - Sharing the Land (12) 

2022

charcoal on paper

140 x 200 cm

image: Peter Cox




Sabina Timmermans (NL)

Roots (3)

2024

charcoal on paper

110 x 141,5 cm

sabinatimmermans.nl




 

Saturday 24 February 2024

Romain Van Wissen / Sigmar Polke


Sigmar Polke

Baumhaus 

1976





Romain Van Wissen

Descendu ici pour les vacances

2018 

122 x 100 cm

acrylic on canvas





Romain Van Wissen (BE)

Se remettre d'aplomb

2018

122 x 104 cm

acrylic on canvas

http://romainvanwissen.com




Friday 9 February 2024

Toon Berghahn / Pieter Jansz. Saenredam

 


Pieter Jansz. Saenredam

Interieur van de Sint-Odulphuskerk in Assendelft

1649

oilpaint on panel

49,6 × 75 cm





Pieter Jansz. Saenredam

Het oude stadhuis in Amsterdam

1657

oilpaint on panel

65,5 × 84,5 cm 

 



 

When I was at the Rietveld Academy I wanted to become Jackson Pollock, or Willem de Kooning. Abstract, virtuoso and expressive. That way of painting also had many similarities with the guitar music of Jimi Hendrix, another childhood hero of mine. Later I discovered that abstract art was not for me. I started painting reality and worked more cerebral. I became fascinated by art from the Middle Ages, but also by Saenredam, a great master from the 17th century. His interior paintings are created by observing endlessly. The drawings he made while visiting a building were sometimes only converted into paintings decades later. Only then did he also apply modification, for the benefit of the composition or other qualities of the final image. 

That's how he mainly painted in his head and I recognize that well, although he was of course a much greater artist than I will ever be. The calm and tranquility in his painted spaces is beautiful, it is overwhelmingly quiet. The light often radiates from behind, as if the painting itself illuminates the actual space where you are as a viewer.

 

Toon Berghahn, 2024





Toon Berghahn

Jacobs ladder

2024

mixed media on wood 

104 x 62 cm 





Toon Berghahn (NL)

Kosmos

2023

mixed media on wood

122 x 139 cm

www.toonberghahn.nl




Sunday 28 January 2024

Ema Vaneková / Pierre Bonnard

 


Pierre Bonnard 

On the track

1895

oilpaint on panel

42,3 x 27,5 cm





Pierre Bonnard

The Bath

1925

oilpaint on canvas

86 x 120,6 cm

 

 

The paintings of Pierre Bonnard often feel timeless for me; showing human life and love has always been the same. 

Painted with bold strokes and emotionally lively colors the paintings give a feeling of childlike appreciation and at the same time a strange lifelessness.

 

Ema Vaneková, 2024





Ema Vaneková

Spolu Zima

2024

oilpaint on linen

40 x 60 cm




Ema Vaneková (SK/NL)

Laska v Postele

2024

oilpaint on linen

140 x 70 cm

www.ema-vanekova.com






Saturday 2 December 2023

Michael Weißköppel / Michel Majerus

 


Michel Majerus 

10 bears masturbating in 10 boxes

1992

295,3 x 560,6 cm

acrylic on canvas





Michel Majerus

lost forever

1992

280 x 400 cm

acrylic on canvas

 


 

Majerus like

Not the worst comparison I thought when I read the comment under one of my Instagram posts. Majerus has a lot that drives me to make paintings. His curiosity towards the environments and his enthusiasm to be aware of changes in the world that directly flooded into his art. By applying various techniques and mixing different influences he developed a signature style with different characteristics where none is taking precedence over the other. In his paintings, an expressive brushwork has the same value as a comic character, there is no high and low. 

He didn‘t accept boundaries, his work is catchy and he was in the here and now... but even as I write this, I‘m wondering whether exactly the opposite might be desirable sometimes. Majerus works appear as if they are entirely dedicated to postpop, the aesthetics of advertising, video games and consumerism. And it can be seen as if he just celebrated this flat aesthetics and built them a memorial. Or not? “What looks good today may not look good tomorrow,” one of his paintings shows him as a doubter. His works, which appear so self-confident, are perhaps a criticism of consumption and our enthusiasm for media. 

Often the work seems to be unfinished, parts are overpainted and the surface is kind of damaged. Scratches on the glossy world of the computer screen. Doubt and Enthusiasm? Is there only black and white? Or is there a wide variety of shades of grey? Maybe he simply quoted and painted things that excited him without evaluating them in advance. 

I feel very close to him, painting what interests me, what excites me and what I simply want to paint. And it shouldn‘t matter whether this already exists, whether someone else has already done it or whether someone says that you shouldn‘t paint it.

 

Michael Weißköppel, 2023





Michael Weißköppel

Didn't

2023

120 x 170 cm

acrylic and acrylic spray paint on canvas





Michael Weißköppel

Mirrors

2023

160 x 240 cm

acrylic and acrylic spray paint on canvas





Michael Weißköppel (DE)

GOO

2022

160 x 240 cm

acrylic and acrylic spray paint on canvas

www.weisskoeppel.com







Sunday 19 November 2023

Lydia Scheurleer / Odilon Redon

 


Odilon Redon

The Dream

1904

oil on canvas

private collection




Odilon Redon

Roger and Angelica

1910

pastel on paper on canvas

92,7 x 73 cm




Odilon Redon

Trees on a yellow background

1901

oil, tempera, charcoal, pastel on canvas

247 x 173 cm

Musée d’Orsay

 

 


 

"I have always felt the need to copy small, accidental objects from nature. Only after I have gone to great lengths to faithfully reproduce a blade of grass, a branch or an old wall do I suddenly feel that I need to create something from my imagination. This is how nature becomes my source of inspiration."

 

“Every stroke of the brush, every line drawn, is an invitation into a world of infinite possibilities, where anything can happen”

 

“To create is to delve into the unknown, to embrace the uncertainty and embrace the chaos. It is this journey that art finds its truest form.”

 

Odilon Redon

 

 

Landscapes that are constantly changing through time, the influence of the weather and the intervention of man, forms the breeding ground for my visual work. The cycle of budding, growth and flowering, decay, dying and sprouting again determines the difference in forms, colours and atmosphere so characteristic of these different stages. This natural process, the rhythm of change, repetition or continuous progression, is also taking place within ourselves, something we tend to forget.

 

In the last few years my work has been shifting from exploring the visual world outside to the visual world inside as well. The connection between nature and me is a never-ending exploration, as I am part of it.

 

I feel a similarity between Redon's work and my own. He too often started from an observation of nature.  It is precisely his way of working that creates a dimension beyond reality. The work is ambiguous and has something intangible.

 

Lydia Scheurleer, 2023





Lydia Scheurleer

High Tide 5

2021

Pen-bé series

handmade print, watercolour, pastel on craftliner

102 x 72 cm




Lydia Scheurleer

De Poel 11

2023

handmade print, marker, acrylic on canvas

30 x 24 cm




Lydia Scheurleer (NL)

'Pulse' Brainscape

2023

handmade print, conté, watercolour on paper

42 x 29,7 cm

www.lydiascheurleer.com




Saturday 4 November 2023

Mark Kramer / Gordon Matta-Clark



Gordon Matta-Clark

Office Baroque: photographic documentation_24 Interior view

1977

 


 

Wandering through my bookshelves it was hard to choose an artwork. With just as much enthusiasm I could have chosen the work of Jan Schoonhoven, Gunther Eucker or Yves Klein, but the installation Office Baroque (1977) by Gordon Matta-Clark unites all different aspects of my recent work. 

https://www.muhka.be/nl/collections/artworks/o/item/4270-office-baroque-photographic-documentation
I became fascinated by architectural concepts during my studies at the art academy where I was first introduced to the work of Matta-Clark. In addition, I have a great love for archeology and geology, discovering the earth by digging and drilling within a framework, uncovering matter layer by layer. Through perforation, layers appear and disappear. All of this is ultimately brought together in a powerful minimal image. 

 

Mark Kramer, 2023





Mark Kramer

Platenatlas (1963)

2022

23,5 x 29 cm

perforated atlas, glue, acrylpaint





Mark Kramer

Platenatlas (1963)

detail





Mark Kramer

studiowall 2022





Mark Kramer

Kleine atlas der gehele aarde (1961)

2022

24 x 32 cm

perforated atlas, glue, acrylpaint





Mark Kramer

layers of perforated paper

studio 2022





Mark Kramer (NL)

Kleine atlas der gehele aarde (1963)

2021

work in progress, detail 

www.markkramer.nl