Stijn Peeters / James Ensor

James Ensor

Alimentation doctrinaire

1889
etching enhanced with wash and colored chalk on Japanese paper, plate I, second state

18 x 23,8 cm

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

The neo-liberal ‘flat’ world of international money and their local lackeys is pressing hard on the everyday life of citizens, everything is sellable and what does not sell isn’t worth anything and can be discarded. It’s a deeply cynical belief. The real threats that face our planet and future generations are not addressed, the people we choose to represent us, act like clowns and players in a theatre. Reacting primarily to the last tweets, facebook posts and internet-scandals, they are under constant pressure from the media to perform.

Ensor made fun of power, cynical, hard and unforgiving. How would the present day version of his 'Alimentation doctrinaire' look? Church, army, king and court? It would look very simple, ordinary guys in power suits, white mostly, apparatchiks and managers, people rewarded for being able to take harsh decisions, lacking the powers of fantasy to even begin imagining the effects of their actions on other people. This is a challenge and I’ve decided to make ‘necessary‘ works, work that needs to be made, thoroughly democratic in spirit, hopefully uplifting and stimulating.

Stijn Peeters, 2015

 

Stijn Peeters (NL)

Sorgeloos

2014

acrylic and oil on linen

250 x 200 cm

www.stijnpeeters.com

Marthe Zink / Roger Raveel

Roger Raveel

Introspection

2002

oil, synthetic mirror glass, canvas

145 x 114 cm

With his right hand on his knee and a square mirror face, Raveel takes a sitting position in a space which exhales void. The blue plinth falls on both sides of the canvas and in this way goes into the space outside the painting. The square shape of the green edged mirror comes back into the framed white emptiness defined in the background. The work is called 'Introspection', Raveel’s right hand that painted on canvas, is prominently in the foreground. As a viewer, you are confronted with yourself by the mirror and you become part of the work. Raveel allows you to be part of his way of seeing things.

His work has many contrasts, for example, between organic forms like human figures and nature and geometric shapes. All have a different physical presence and a different approach in his way of painting. The observable reality is very important in his work, as well as the relationship between space and time in which matter is brought to life by the spirit.

Marthe Zink, 2015

Marthe Zink (NL)

Narcissus in Nowadays Society

2014

mixed media on paper

80 x 120 cm

www.marthezink.com

Narcissus is surrounded by emptiness, his own reflection in the water is no longer visible, his face is transformed into a head without eyes, although he is still able to call everything without having any idea of what he’s doing. I’ve chosen this drawing of mine in which the confrontation with the mirroring image/reflection is central.

In this work I refer to Narcissus by Caravaggio (1598/1599). Narcissus, in the stories of Ovidius, falls in love with his own reflection. He tries to embrace his mirror image, but every time it disappears in ripples of water. This makes him languish into a daffodil. I compare this with today's society where everyone strives to be seen as an individual, making us more identical and actually languishing us as well. I made this work during my Artist in Residency at DRAWInternational. While working on it, a mirror fell and broke. I saw this as a predestined occurrence. The superstition of a broken mirror comes from the time of the Roman Empire and says that a broken mirror affects the soul.

In my drawings I make contradictions between figurative and abstract geometric style elements and want to make the audience look at familiar images in a different way.

Marthe Zink, 2015

Marcel Berlanger / Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Medusa

1595-1598

oil on canvas mounted on a convex wooden shield

55 x 48 cm

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

My version of Medusa is a painting on a light box with big holes. It is a portrait of Noami Watts as the jellyfish (funny translation of Medusa of course) of Caravaggio. The portrait is extracted from the King Kong movie by Peter Jackson, just when Naomi is sandwiched between a tyrannosaur and King Kong. But if you look closely you only see the many spots of the Hollywood studio lights in her eyes. I added neon lamps behind the painting to create wedged stupefaction between two technical moments, and the holes are connectors.

Marcel Berlanger, 2014

Marcel Berlanger (BE)

Enseigne Méduse 
front

2011-2012

aluminium lightbox, neons, oil on glass fibre

260 x 160 x 18 cm 

 
Marcel Berlanger (BE)

Enseigne Méduse

back
2011-2012

aluminium lightbox, neons, oil on glass fibre

260 x 160 x 18 cm 

www.marcelberlanger.info

Caren van Herwaarden / Francisco de Zurbarán

Francisco de Zurbarán

Agnus Dei

1635–1640

oil on canvas

37 × 62 cm

Museo del Prado, Madrid

In Zurbaran’s art all is silent. His sober brown/black/white paintings do not distract with colour, narrative or lavish form. He paints metre-high portraits of pale monks, wrapped in coarsely woven, brown robes. They look at you seriously and questioningly: who are you, what are you doing and where were you? They are encounters. 

The Agnus Dei of 1635-1640 is my favourite. It hangs in the main room of the Prado Museum, Madrid, in the company of the enormous paintings by, among others, Velazquez and El Greco. A lamb lies on its side, its head stretched out, its four feet tied together. It does not struggle; it lies still and awaits its fate. Who are you, what are you doing, where were you? You do not have to be a believer nor an Einstein to discover the analogy with Jesus Christ, but through Zurbaran’s understatement you get the idea that you have thought it up yourself. 

I thought of Spain, the time I went walking with my dog. I thought of how my trusty, gentle hound, on coming across a flock of sheep, turned within seconds into a raging killer. I realized that nothing I could do would keep him from going after those roaming clouds, the fluffy beasts. Sheep do not defend themselves. It does not occur to them to join together to protect their lambs. All they do is flee, let themselves be driven into the barbed wire. They surrender with no resistance. Barely a half hour later the dog returned, panting and happily wagging his tail, while behind him, spread out in the meadow, lay three dead lambs. Why? Because he was able do it. Unsatisfying, but for the question of why atrocities take place this is probably the most definitive answer.

Caren van Herwaarden, 2015

Caren van Herwaarden (NL)

Deken

2014

collage

30 x 16 cm

private collection Rotterdam

www.cvanherwaarden.com 

Luc Hoekx / Jorge de Oteiza

Jorge de Oteiza

Caja Vacia

1958

iron and copper

29,5 x 30,6 x 32,6 cm

Even more than by other painters (  ), I was inspired by sculptors and architects. A real eye-opener to me was this work by Jorge de Oteiza (Spain, 1908-2003).

The design is as complex as simple. It tells me how I look at space and form, although the work remains enigmatic.

As an icon in geometric abstract tradition, it is also an early announcement of deconstructivism.

Luc Hoekx, 2015

Luc Hoekx (BE)

Raum

2011

oil on aluminium

70 x 80 cm

www.luchoekx.be

Bert Frings / Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde

Masks, Still Life

1911

oil on canvas

73 x 77,5 cm

'The Broken Ear' seems to be a spontaneous and expressive painting, however it is made slow and deliberate. The work is loosely based on a painting by Emil Nolde, a German Expressionist, who was briefly a member of Die Brücke. Since I can remember I have been fascinated by expressionism. Especially since I saw paintings by Heckel, Kirchner and Nolde at a young age.

There are a hundred years between his 'Masks, Still Life' from 1911 and my painting 'The Broken Ear'. I very much like his revolutionary painting. I look at it as a hymn of praise to other until then unknown cultures. A courageous painting of artifacts, masks, represented with radical gesture in radiant colors, made by an individual, receptive to the unknown and mysterious. This seems so contradictory with his ideas and thoughts. A brilliant work but the more I try to learn both about work and the life of one of the most famous artists ever, the less I understand.

The title of my painting is both a nod to Hergé because of his stereotypical characterizations and questions about his alleged collaboration with Germany, but even more a tribute to the Arumbaya people.

Bert Frings, december 2014

Bert Frings (NL)

The Broken Ear

2011

acrylic on canvas

70 x 70 cm

www.bertfrings.nl

Joseba Eskubi / Francisco de Zurbarán

Francisco de Zurbarán

Agnus Dei

1635–1640

oil on canvas

38 × 62 cm

Museo del Prado, Madrid

The animal becomes an island, a solitary figure in front of the abyss and the silence. I am fascinated by this image, how all the little details create a landscape frozen in time. The light illuminates the scene and reveals us the material as something new and amazing.

Joseba Eskubi, 2014

Joseba Eskubi (ES)

Untitled

2014

oil on canvas

55 x 46 cm

www.josebaeskubi.com