Saturday 28 December 2013

Aquil Copier / Kazimir Malevich


 

Kazimir Malevich
The Woodcutter
1912
oil on canvas
94 x 71.5 cm


My tribute goes to the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (Kiev, 23 februari 1878 - Leningrad, 15 mei 1935). Malevitsj/Malevich was a painter, art theoretician and pioneer in geometric abstract art and one of the premium members of the Russian avant-garde. For me he was a painter that went through different periods of image making and he was not afraid of changing his painting methods and style. His work is not meant to be a nice picture only but there is a world of theory and ideology behind and I feel related to him in both ways. In Facebook terms I would say: I LIKE!
Aquil Copier, 2013



Aquil Copier (NL)
No Title
2013
oil and spraypaint on canvas
80 x 60 cm

Saturday 21 December 2013

Bart Slangen / Léon Spilliaert




Léon Spilliaert
Dike and Beach 
1907
Indian ink, wash and colored pencil on paper
49,4 x 63,9 cm


I've been a great admirer of the dark, melancholic work of Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) since a very long time. The selected work 'Dike and Beach' is a drawing on paper, ink washed. In addition, a fairly recent work by myself 'Diamond Beach', oil on canvas.
Always the same, always different.
Bart Slangen, 2013




Bart Slangen (BE)
Diamond Beach 
2013
oil on canvas
80 x 80 cm  


Saturday 14 December 2013

Cecilia Vissers / Walter de Maria




Walter de Maria
The Broken Kilometer
1979
500 brass rods
each rod 200 x 5 cm
Photo: John Abbott
 Courtesy Dia Art Foundation


Two years ago I visited The Broken Kilometer (1979) in New York at 393 West Broadway. Walter de Maria, American sculptor, arranged five hundred highly polished, pure brass rods, according to precise calculations. The total weight of his installation is 18 ¾ tons. To me this is a unique place of solitude and silence, well hidden among endless parades of stores. I like it when art reduces the speed of daily life, a place for contemplation. This is a permanent installation; here some of the most expensive commercial real estate was held aside for a unique experience of art.
Cecilia Vissers, 2013


 
Cecilia Vissers (NL)
A moment in time
2012
anodized aluminium
two-part, each part 95 x 23 x 1,2 cm
Photo: Peter Cox, Eindhoven


Saturday 7 December 2013

Hans de Bruijn / Mark Rothko



 
Mark Rothko
Four Darks in Red
1958
oil on canvas
259 × 295 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York


Hans de Bruijn recognises the romantic artist’s attitude - painterly recreating a sublime perception in the paintings of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). He assigns a deep methaphysical dimension in his paintings by his very specific use of paint and color.
De Bruijn paints him after a photograph of the artist in his studio. Rothko’s monochrome composition is translated into air, water and beach. By the version from Hans de Bruijn, “Black on off-white and black and brownish grey” we see the dark figure of the artist trois quart from behind, as it where in conversation with space, and follow the direction in which he is looking. This image does make use of the “C.D. Friedrich effect”, leading the spectator into space of thick paint of subdued color clouds - melancholic contemplation.

Jetteke Bolten-Rempt, 2011



Hans de Bruijn (NL)
Black on off-white and black and brownish grey
2008
oil on canvas
200 x 150 cm


Wednesday 27 November 2013

Stefan Peters / Isaac Levitan




Isaac Levitan
Fog over water
1895
oil on canvas
40,4 x 61 cm


Isaac Levitan sometimes manages to create different realities in one image.
Combining different brushstrokes and using certain colours makes the paint itself become a subject.
Stefan Peters, 2013

Stefan Peters (BE)
Malá Morávka, Czech Republic
2013
acrylic on canvas


Saturday 16 November 2013

Reinoud van Vught / Hercules Segers




Hercules Segers
The two trees
ca. 1615 - ca. 1630
etching
155 x 172 mm


Sometimes an artwork grabs you by the throat. 
Why? It’s not because of the beauty, the subject or the content. 
But there is something in it you would like to have done yourself. 
It’s ahead of your time. 
It is a comforting thought that a 400 years old print can achieve this.  
Reinoud van Vught



Reinoud van Vught (NL) 
Untitled
2013
ink and acrylic on Saunders Waterford paper
101 x 152 cm
www.vanvught.com


Saturday 9 November 2013

John Van Oers / Gordon Matta-Clark




Gordon Matta-Clark
Splitting (detail of a work composed of 7 photographs)
1974
color photograph
34,6 x 50,5 cm


My tribute goes to the legendary American artist ‘Gordon Matta-Clarck’ (1943-1978). He belonged to no particular movement or school and his work erased the boundaries between architecture, sculpture, drawing and photography. A cult figure in both contemporary art and architecture circles.
John Van Oers

But now I would like to give the word to the great Mr. John Baldessari:
'Gordon’s work spotlights and pinpoints one of the crucial ideas of modern art-actually doing and redoing an absurd idea. This might sound strange, but he was both a Minimalist and a Surrealist...
Gordon was a second generation Minimalist in that some of the dissatisfactions and restlessness, not with the ideas but with the execution of Minimalist art, are evident in his work. He made the transition between Minimalist concept and a kind of expressionist execution. You could say he was a messy Minimalist; he liked big, rough edges. Can you imagine him trying precisely or carefully to deal with “edges” as an aesthetic?
His work was incredibly dreamlike. It was stuff you would only do in your dreams, and maybe would have liked to have dared really to do...
What I liked about his work was that it bothered people in the outside world. I would have like to have seen his ideas escalated more and more to have seen him split the Trade Center after cutting a house in New Jersey (Splitting, 1974) and the pier in New York.
It would have been interesting to see where Gordon’s work would have gone. To see whether entropy would have taken over. Gordon’s work was a visceral experience, but the ideas carry in photographs because they are so audacious.'




John Van Oers (BE)
Playground #01
2013
two wooden school benches upside down
100 x 100 cm



John Van Oers (BE)
Playground #01 (detail)
2013
2 wooden school desks placed upside down, 4 TL-Lights, 8 pillars, 4 benches, 1 chewing gum
100 x 100 x 28 cm 



Saturday 2 November 2013

Koen van den Broek / Clyfford Still



 
Clyfford Still
1954
1954
oil on canvas
288,3 x 396,2 cm


I can think of no other way for a serious artist to achieve his ends than by doing what I did – to show that this instrument, the limited means of paint on canvas, had a more important role than to glorify popes and kings or decorate the walls of rich men.
Clyfford Still



Koen van den Broek (BE)
Void
2009
oil on canvas
300 x 200 cm
www.koenvandenbroek.org


Saturday 26 October 2013

Katinka Lampe / Salomon de Bray




Salomon de Bray
Young Woman Combing Her Hair
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
54 x 46 cm
Musée de Louvre, Paris


Because of the light-dark contrast and the zoom-in on the model, the painting of Salomon de Bray obtains intimacy. It draws our eye in. It makes us voyeur of the scene. 
The model in my painting has a confronting look. ‘Look at me, I’m wearing a blonde wig, I am fully aware of my appearance’.
Katinka Lampe 2013


 
Katinka Lampe (NL)
141122
2012
oil on linen
140 x 110 cm

Saturday 19 October 2013

Alain Biltereyst / Bart van der Leck




Bart van der Leck
Composition N°7
1917
oil on canvas


 
Alain Biltereyst (BE)
Untitled
2012
acrylic on plywood
16,5 x 23 cm 
www.biltereyst.com
www.abiltereyst.tumblr.com



Saturday 12 October 2013

Matthew Fisher / David Park




David Park
Two Bathers
1958
oil on canvas
147,3 x 127 cm
Collection SFMOMA


The late works of David Park, who in 1960 died at only 59, are some of the strongest figurative and narrative paintings of 20th century American art. Park’s canvases contain an energy, light, and life that are expressed in both the subjects he painted and how he painted them. His use of oil paint, often applied in thick layers with frozen brushstrokes, physically and visually created the space in his paintings. But more interestingly, paint is not just a vehicle for Park to translate his narrative. Rather, it becomes as much a part of the story as it is his telling of that story.

As different as Park’s work is from mine, this idea of entangling the personalized way we paint with the making and reading of our images, is a shared love. For myself, the use of acrylic paint allows for a creation of colors, layers, edges, and textures that can only be made with acrylic paint. We don’t deny the inherent flatness of painting; instead, we use it to heighten our sense of depicted space. This flattening and creation, pushes the images and narrative into a realm of memory – they feel real because they were real. With each memory we relive, we rewrite it. The original moment looses definition while the new memory becomes more genuine. The distance from these authentic moments of truth, becomes our content. What you see, is what we remember. 
Matthew Fisher 2013




Matthew Fisher (US)
Young Man Luther
2013
acrylic on canvas
30,5 x 25,4 cm