Sunday 26 December 2021

Bram Braam / Gordon Matta-Clark

 


Gordon Matta-Clark
Bingo 
1974

painted wood, metal, plaster and glass, three sections

175,3 x 77,.8 x 25,4 cm

collection MoMA





Gordon Matta-Clark

Conical Intersect

1975

27-29 Rue Beaubourg, Paris

 

 

 

 

Still a huge influence for many young artists interested and dealing with topics related to architecture and space in our urban environment is Gordon Matta-Clark. Unfortunately he died way too young in 1978 when he was only 35. His radical approach to look beyond the limits of sculpture and 50 years after Duchamp’s ready-made “fountain” he declared our buildings, architecture and city spaces as his main artistic play field. Buildings, stairs, windows and floors became the main subject of the art itself, a building as a sculpture, splitting houses, cutting holes through the building, floors and walls. Sometimes he showed the elements he took out of the building and showed it in the museum, but mostly the building itself was the art work what was only visible for a short moment till the building was demolished. By making holes, you could look through the whole structure of the architecture and showing in his words “the heart of the building”

 

His way how to look for the limits of sculpture in our daily environment can be seen similarly in my own work, although differently. My works look like real fragments taken out of our landscapes but are in fact well thought in balanced constructed sculptural works. I play with the tension between reality and abstraction and dealing with the question: where am I looking at, is it real, is it staged, is it reconstructed or a mixture of all these things, questions to be made more than ever in our accelerated time. 

 

The massive influence by Gordon Matta-Clark can be seen back in all of my works but specific in my use of materials and ambition to look differently to our daily reality. A wall as a painting, a building as a sculpture, a landscape as the art work.

 

Bram Braam, 2021





Bram Braam

exhibition view 'Cycle', Bram Braam & Anneke Eussen

PARK, Tilburg (NL)

2020





Bram Braam

The flow of present 

2020

200 x 220 cm





Bram Braam (NL/DE)

Outgrowth

2021

steel, tiles, wood, posters

100 × 58 × 38 cm

brambraam.com



Saturday 16 October 2021

Erik Mattijssen / Josef Scharl



Josef Scharl 
Uniform
1931
oil on canvas





Josef Scharl 
Geschlachteter Hammel
1933 
oil on canvas

 

 

Every now and then it happens that you find yourself transfixed by work of a painter that you have never heard of. The pleasure of a new star in the firmament. That happened to me in Munich in the late 1990s, in an exhibition on the Neue Sachlichkeit with well-known names such as Otto Dix, Beckmann and Georg Grosz. 
It was a small painting of a man with a battered face, 'Blind Soldier', from 1928, a victim of the horrors of the First World War, painted by a man who knew those horrors all too well: Josef Scharl. 
Scharl's oeuvre (1896-1954) develops from mainly portraits in gloomy Germany between the world wars to abstracted, lighter colourful work that he made later in life, during his exile in the United States to which he travelled in 1935, on fleeing the Nazis. His early work shows that he loved Vincent van Gogh, but what he paints is the darkness of the interwar period, the corrupted power, the urban poor, and the impending doom and horror of the Third Reich. They are not the subjects that concern me in my work, far from it. But I know that one can especially like artists who do the opposite of what you make yourself. Maybe it's a dark side in me that I don't give much of a chance in my work. Matisse and Hockney, Vuillard and Zurbaran, Brusselmans and Hopper accompany me in a natural way. Yet I draw inspiration from Scharl's ruthless portraits, his bold doomsday, his theatrical scenes and his use of colour. It's very rare that you get the chance to see a painting by him in real life, unfortunately. It's about time for a big overview of Josef Scharl in the Netherlands.

 

Erik Mattijssen, 2021



Erik Mattijssen 
Donkey's years
2006
150 x 200 cm
pastel and gouache on paper, wood, rope

collection Stedelijk Museum Schiedam 




Erik Mattijssen  
O Milagro
2011
196 x 250 cm
pastel, gouache and pencil on paper, wood, rope

collection Museum Jan Cunen, Oss




Erik Mattijssen (NL)
Riverbeach
2014
80 x 70 cm
pencil and gouache on paper

collectie kunstenaar 

www.erikmattijssen.nl

rk



Saturday 11 September 2021

Dieuwke Spaans / Many artists


Many artists

clippings, studio floor 2021

 

 


 

My whole life is intertwined with finding and embracing heroes. Artists who have shaped me as long as I can remember. They are my advisors, my companions.

 

I must have been about 6 years old, when I saw my first George Stubbs. Unfortunately, not in real life, but on a postcard. I no longer have this postcard but the image 'Whistlejacket', c.1762, hangs in my studio. This painting, of the rearing horse, not only depicts the animal but depicts the strength and the emotion, everything my love for this painting and my love for animals stands for. 

 

Never before had I had such a strong attraction when looking at an image.

 

The Louvre was an annual part of the holiday in my youth, and every time when I saw the painting of the crouched boy 'Jeune homme nu étude', 1836 by H. Flandrin, it felt like a reunion with an acquaintance, with a friend. 

 

I remember the Louvre because of the stories I made during the car ride to Paris. I shared the stories silently with the castaways and savage women with bare breasts sitting in the back of the car.

 

When I was a teenager, I went to the Jeff Koons exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum, an exhibition at the time of director Wim Beeren. Jeff Koons showed me that anything was possible and allowed within the language of art.

 

Once at the art academy in the 90s, Edward Kienholz along with Jean Cocteau, Nan Goldin and Bruce Nauman crossed my path.

 

During the third year, Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois came on the scene. Cinema also became a very, perhaps most important source and advisor (the film movements Neue Welle and Nouvelle Vague, but also everything from Hollywood was reviewed).

 

Artist Servaas Schoone (daring and individuality) stood by my side in the third and fourth academic year. He was not only an advisor, he was my mentor. He has given me the no nonsense attitude but also the freedom to imagine language. As year teachers, Aernout Mik and Nan Hoover have shaped my perspective and attitude towards my visual practice. Pierre Klossowski completed the art academy together with Philip Guston. When writing these words about heroes and art, I remember my first visual contact with a painting of Guston: 'Painting Smoking Eating'. It must have been far before the studying at the academy, I can’t give words to the feeling and joy this painting and artist gives me every time I see it in “person”. But I’m not sure if I liked the painting back then.

 

During my year at Ateliers Arnhem, women like Sarah Lucas, Tracy Emin and Helen Frankenthaler came. Hesse and Guston stayed. The movie stayed. A studio visit by Daan van Golden gave me focus and tenderness regarding my subjects.

Over the years, most of the masters have stayed by my side, new heroes have emerged. Paul McCarthy and Francis Picabia joined me in my studio as critical speakers.

 

Perhaps I could name four artists the most important (only if I were forced to choose) for their daring individuality and imagination and because my work has direct relationships with many of their ideas. Picabia, Cocteau and René Daniels are always in conversation with me during my work process. Odilon Redon for its elusiveness. 

 

A lot of contemporary artists “hang around” in my studio and in my head. Ellen Gallagher is one of them. But also, Laure Prouvost and Ana Navas, Neil Beloufa, Eva Rothchild, Nina Canell, Janis Rafa and Jon Rafman.  

 

The masters ensure that the outcome of my ideas is not fixed. That I don't get bored within my medium and use of material. They are masters of imagining our thoughts. 

 

I am aware that I forget to mention too many artists. Young contemporary artists, colleagues I admire and who inspire me. 

 

The arts have a major influence on my daily life and my own visual work.  

 

How to write an ode to this?  I don’t have an answer. 

 

Dieuwke Spaans, 2021



Dieuwke Spaans

Terra 

2020

porcelain and Christal glaze

Ø 29 cm 

private collection

www.tegenboschvanvreden.com/artist/dieuwke-spaans

rk

 


Saturday 28 August 2021

Ricardo van Eyk / Michel Majerus

 


Michel Majerus (1967 -2002)

Einschiffung

1996

acrylic on canvas

480 x 700 cm, 15 parts, each 160 x 140 cm




Michel Majerus

Aquarell

1996

acrylic on canvas

980 x 960 cm, 42 parts, each 140 x 160 cm

 

 

 

What is striking about these installations at first sight [...] is the fact that the artist accepts the room as more than just a necessary evil. Instead he underscores or even creates its different qualities [...]. Above all, the installations mostly emphasize the temporal, more or less dynamic moment of their perception. 

 

Raimar Stange 





Ricardo van Eyk (NL)

Installation view NIHIL

2020

www.ricardovaneyk.nl

rk



Friday 13 August 2021

Wim Claessen / Léon Spilliaert



Léon Spilliaert

Strand gezien vanuit Bredene 

1908

washed East Indian ink on paper

73,8 x 48 cm

 

 

 

I got to now the work of León Spilliaert (1881–1946 ) during a visit to Ostend (B) in 1996 where in the museum of fine arts an exhibition of his work took place. 

His seascapes in particular made a big impression on me, I came across the work several times in the following years and every time there was that enormous appreciation for the austere great strength of the work. 

At the beginning of 2005 my work developed in a direction in which the simplicity, the sobriety of the image and my use of color became characteristic of my work.

Again I run into Spilliaert and without copying him, his work influenced my way of working.

 

Wim Claessen, 2021






Wim Claessen (NL)

Beach

2018

acrylic on canvas

120 x 170 cm

http://wimclaessen.com

rk






Saturday 31 July 2021

Rob Bouwman / Pieter Bruegel de Oude



Pieter Bruegel de Oude

The Tower of Babel

ca. 1563

oil on panel

59,9 x 74,6 cm

 


 

During my art school days, when visiting Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, I was fascinated by the work of Pieter Bruegel de Oude. One of the most famous works from the Museum, 'The Tower of Babel', which was made around 1560. The versatility in the transparent hues and the eye for detail has 
stayed with me ever since. A fabulous work with infinite depth in the glazed oil layers.

 

Rob Bouwman, 2021



Rob Bouwman
Studio view - Untitled (p0102021) 
2021
oil/alkyd wood
180 x 145 cm



Rob Bouwman
Studio view - Untitled (p0112021)

2021

oil/alkyd wood 

180 x 145 cm    




Rob Bouwman (NL)

Studio view

www.robbouwman.com

rk





Saturday 17 July 2021

Jacomijn den Engelsen / Erik Andriesse


Erik Andriesse 
Sunflowers 
1987
acrylic on linen 
200 x 280 cm 

 

When I first saw Erik Andriesse's (1957-1983) work in the early 1980s, I was struck by the enormous vitality that emanates from his drawings and paintings of flowers. The vigor of the plants is splashing out and shimmering in the background. This intensity is still inspiring me. The power of his work convinced me that realism could also be 'cool' and working from close observation a valid starting point for great art. I really like the combination of the graphic with the painterly that Andriesse has often worked with. He made some great woodcuts. The freedom with which Erik Andriesse has used his visual means is something I still strive for. 

Jacomijn den Engelsen, 2021



Jacomijn den Engelsen 
Sunflowers 2 
2005 
woodcut 
120 x 80 cm 



Jacomijn den Engelsen (NL)
Field
2008 
woodcut
100 x 160 cm 
www.jacomijndenengelsen.nl
rk



Saturday 12 June 2021

Stijn Kriele / Richard Diebenkorn



Richard Diebenkorn

Ocean Park #116

1979

oil and charcoal on canvas 

208 x 182 cm





Richard Diebenkorn

Ocean Park #27

1970

oil and charcoal on canvas

254 x 202 cm





Richard Diebenkorn

Window

1967

oil and graphite on canvas

234 × 203 cm

 

 

 

As an art-student, I accidentally got introduced to the work of Richard Diebenkorn. For no other reason then the colors of the book’s cover, I picked it up.

I was struck by the work of Diebenkorn immediately. Composition, the use of colors, brushstrokes, layering, clarity and how they all combined have such a strong reference to landscape without depicting it. Diebenkorn himself said about his work; "my paintings are abstractions that do not reject the world, but contain it, in a concentrated form." To this day I study his work and it continues to fascinate me how the work is both crystal clear and elusive at the same time.

 

Stijn Kriele, 2021





Stijn Kriele 

Zonder titel

2017

monotype, collage, pasted on paper

100 x 140 cm


Stijn Kriele 

Zonder titel

2021

monotype, collage, pasted on dibond

24 x 23 cm


Stijn Kriele (NL)

Zonder titel

2021

acrylic, casein on linen

55 x 70 cm

www.stijnkriele.nl

rk