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

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

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

Jolanda Schouten / Carmen Herrera

 

Carmen Herrera 

at work

Carmen Herrera 

Verde que te quiero verde (Green How I Desire You Green)

2020

large-scale mural

Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

 

 

 

I only discovered Carmen Herrera's work in 2018, in a major exhibition of her work at Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf. She died last year at the age of 106. Until the end, she worked on new work every day in her flat with ruler and compasses. Herrera, born in Cuba in 1915, had to wait her whole life for her work to be recognised. At the age of 89, she sold her first work. 

In 2018, Whitney Museum finally picked up her work. The actions of Guerilla Girls (https://www.guerrillagirls.com/) who have been fighting for years for gender and ethical equality in the art world, are vital, still today! Herrera was simultaneously working on her oeuvre alongside Barnett Newman (family friend), Ellsworth Kelly (her neighbour) and Frank Stella. Her work was ignored because she was a woman and her Latin American background did not help either.

 

In Herrera's work, colour and the straight line are the protagonists. I admire her precisely for that focus on the square millimetre where she spends a lifetime digging into the depths. What limitation and concentration! 

Colour is also one of the great loves in my work. Unlike the colourfield painters like Herrera and my other great love Ellsworth Kelly, in my work nothing is tight and straight, but the lines and pools of colour move with me, bending, snapping and digesting with the life of plants. Like a logbook, I record the seasons from my tiny city garden in metres high watercolours.

Painting is something that flows in all directions, from being in the middle of a work seeing what emerges around me. I am always in direct connection with my surroundings. Everyone is welcome in my work. Starting from painting, I work on an ever-growing community embroidery project 'Let's grow flowers not walls' with people from all corners of the world (to be seen next summer in Centraal Museum Utrecht), on De Stiltetuin with plant meditations, on setting out flower bombs with 40 school classes. The antique Persian garden carpet, a sleek geometric carpet representing the four cardinal points, is a starting point. 

From that love of geometry, Carmen Herrera's work touches me very much. It is complementary and therefore strongly related.

 

'Verde que te quiero verde', meaning 'Green How I Desire You Green'; what a title. A mural she realised in 2021 as a 105-year-old for the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin. Or 'More yellow, less green'. In the sleek, formal oeuvre of Herrera who also loves the large format, they are almost incantations, phrases you say to yourself when you are at work. The physical desire for colour as a command for the work. I recognise that and it inspires me enormously.

But most of all, I am captivated by Herrera's attitude. As a fresh graduate in the late 1980s, I heard that a career in art was not possible if you also aspired to motherhood. And perhaps also because I took my career firmly in hand myself, not waiting for galleries, museums and funds. 'My love of the line is what drives me,' Herrara says. 

 

'You have to wait for the bus, it will always come. I had to wait for 98 years but it came!'

 

Jolanda Schouten, 22 October 2023

Jolanda Schouten

in the studio

photo Lize Kraan

Jolanda Schouten

01032022

2022

490 x 350 cm

watercolour, adhesive tape on Thai bamboo paper

exhibition 'AQUAVIT, about contemporary watercolour'

Cacaofabriek Helmond NL (2022)

photo Biek van Bree

Jolanda Schouten (NL)

in the studio

photo Lize Kraan

www.jolandaschouten.nl

Jenetta de Konink / Louise Bourgeois

 

Louise Bourgeois

Single 11

1996

fabric, hanging piece

203 x 107 x 76 cm

Jenetta de Konink (NL)

Serie SL - Jurk

2020

oil/embroidery on canvas

50 x 40 cm

www.jenettadekonink.nl

Judith Krebbekx / Paula Rego

Paula Rego

The dance

1988

acrylic on paper on canvas

213 x 274 cm

Paula Rego

Three blind mice

1989

etching

22,6  x 21,2 cm

 

 

In 2007 I visited Lisbon for the first time and there I saw Paula Rego´s paintings. Her artworks slapped me in the face. They were dark, honest and almost terrifying. She dared to make extremely personal art. She literally painted her fears, her angers and grieves.

In my former art education we had been told not to tell stories, for stories were for writers. And there she was, not afraid to tell her story to the world. 

If art, in any form, dares to be about inner thoughts, it transcends the personal and thus can be recognized by anyone, as we all have these thoughts, these fears, that accompany us in our lives and visit us in our dreams. 

 

Judith Krebbekx, 2023

Judith Krebbekx

Don Juan's reckless daughter

2023

acrylic and charcoal on linen

200 x 180 cm

Judith Krebbekx (NL)

Fool to cry

2023

acrylic and charcoal on linen

100 x 100 cm

www.judithkrebbekx.com