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From figurative to abstract and back again: it’s not a journey that many artists take. Dutch artist Mirthe Klück doesn’t see a significant distinction between the two and creates both abstract paintings and sculptures. “In the end, you’re looking at glued-together bits that evoke a feeling or thought, whether cast in a recognisable figure or not.” This has resulted in a versatile body of work based on Klück’s idiosyncratic observations of everyday things. From a gummy bear and spit-out piece of chewing gum to the wrapper of a chocolate Easter bunny, she explores how layers of matter interact to create a surface that feels both familiar and strange. At Art Rotterdam, FRED&FERRY Gallery is presenting an overview of Mirthe Klück’s work.
Congratulations on your presentation at Art Rotterdam. What can we expect?
Thank you! I’m excited to showcase a comprehensive overview of my work at an exhibition with FRED&FERRY Gallery. I’ll be presenting a combination of more abstract paintings and figurative ceramic sculptures. They all incorporate recognisable motifs and materials from my daily life, transformed into something wondrous and alien based on my own interpretation. I’m guided by painting techniques and ceramic glazes that I find interesting for formal reasons, making the creation journey of the image of intrinsic importance.
What kinds of recognisable motifs and materials are you referring to?
The ceramic sculptures, for instance, are enlargements of a gummy bear and chewed pieces of gum. When I saw a pink spit-out piece of gum on a rosy marble sculpture in Italy last year, I suddenly saw the sculptural qualities of such a form. Chewing gum essentially creates a mould of your teeth. In my paintings, I choose textile materials like curtains, carpet backing and sunscreens as supports. I sometimes add almost nothing to a fabric, but incorporate it by tearing it and creating a composition or simply by stretching it. This may sound inconsistent, but in all these works, I explore how layers of matter interact to create a surface that feels both familiar and strange.
Do you consider this presentation a logical continuation of your previous work or have you embarked on a new path?
This presentation is in fact a continuation of my solo exhibition Moon White Rabbit, which I presented at FRED&FERRY at the end of 2021, which was the first time I showcased both paintings and ceramics. For years, I’ve been creating two-dimensional work that responds to the medium of painting. My first ceramic sculpture, Blue Moon (2021), originates from such a conceptual work, specifically the silkscreen on aluminium foil I’ll be Your Mirror (2018), for which I enlarged a package featuring a Easter bunny that is painting.
The sculpture is an enlargement of the chocolate itself. I found ceramics appropriate due to the similar properties of chocolate and casting clay, such as their creaminess and how easily they transition between liquid and solid phases. The title refers to the glaze: the blueish green Jun glaze is a type of celadon that in China referred to jade stone and The Jade Hare is folklore based on moon markings resembling a rabbit.
The Jun glaze is said to have molecules similar to those causing the Rayleigh scattering in the air, making our sky appear infinitely blue. This brings the glaze closer to the natural phenomenon than paint alone can mimic. Last winter, during a residency at the EKWC, I began focusing more on ceramics. This process resulted in several sculptures that I will be presenting at Art Rotterdam, along with paintings influenced by this process.
Out of curiosity: you initially worked abstractly and later also figuratively. Normally, this is a significant shift in someone’s work, but I imagine that for you, the difference between abstract and figurative isn’t that considerable. Is that correct?
Yes, that’s correct. I don’t see a fundamental difference. In the end, you’re looking at glued-together bits that evoke a feeling or thought, whether cast in a recognisable figure or not. I use figuration more to introduce certain shapes, colours and associations. All the same, I am selective about which figures I use because it should provide just enough without becoming narrative or expressive.
Most people may know your work from Horses in 2021, featuring photos of the equestrian jumping event at the 2012 Olympics. You didn’t take the pictures in the stadium, but in front of the TV with your phone. How did this idea come about? Why did you decide to approach it this way rather than choosing stills from a recording?
The idea came about very intuitively. I simply grabbed my phone while watching the Olympic Games on a lazy summer day, curious to see if I could capture one of those floating horses over those artistic obstacles with all those graphic logos in the corners of the screen. Then I saw that my phone rendered it beautifully. The saturation of colours and selective focus made them resemble contemporary impressionistic miniature paintings, reminding me of Muybridge, Degas, cowboy comics and games like Zoo Tycoon. They also emphasise the absurdity of such an event. Somewhere in the world, horses have to jump over artificial obstacles in a very staged environment. This is captured by various equipment, transmitted via satellites to our TV screens in a live broadcast to give us a feeling of being there.
Since 2012, this trend of experiencing things through screens has only intensified. By taking the photos and printing them in a book, I add more layers to my subjective experience. It was actually quite challenging to reproduce the aesthetic quality of my glowing phone screen on paper. So, the pages of the book consist of digitally developed photos because c-prints also use the RGB colour scheme and layers of chemicals create the colour. Quite similar to a painting or ceramic glaze.
You have a keen eye for seemingly insignificant details and your work has a certain lightness/humour to it, which is why it is sometimes compared to that of Daan van Golden. Is he one of your influences? Who are others?
Yes, Daan van Golden has been my greatest influence after leaving his exhibition at GEM in 2014 feeling very happy. I thought, if art can evoke this feeling, I hope my work can do the same for someone else someday. There are various artistic practices and works that I appreciate, such as those of Lily van der Stokker and Klaas Kloosterboer, but I haven’t come across an artist to whom I feel as connected as to Daan van Golden. It’s mainly because of the feeling I get from his work, although I can’t explain it in simple terms. It’s a basic sense of understanding. I must admit I’ve somewhat let go of this fascination, or perhaps obsession, in the past few years because I need to move forward with my own life. But I think we have a similar way of perceiving things.
Others must notice the playfulness in your work. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received about your work?
Well, it’s hard to choose the best one. Personally, I really appreciate receiving compliments from other artists or when people develop a kind of personal connection with my work. They don’t necessarily have to have it hanging on their wall at home. For instance, someone I didn’t know at the time showed me that he had a painting of mine as a screensaver on his phone. But it’s always interesting and funny to see how people react to my work. I often hear that people want to touch it, even though that is not my intention.
What are you currently working on?
In January, I’m be curating a group exhibition at FRED&FERRY in Antwerp called Mountain Friends. For this exhibition, I’m selecting specific works by Daniele Formica, Kaï-Chun Chang, Maja Klaassens and Nishiko, which resonate with my work. All these works are poetic translations of everyday objects and elements. Broadly speaking, this exhibition is about the illusory difference between what is natural and artificial. I’m also preparing for a residency I’ll be doing in the summer – the Creative Residency Arita in Japan – thanks to the support of the Mondriaan Fonds. The village of Arita is internationally known for its expertise in porcelain, a material that is very challenging to work with. I’m really looking forward to this. Right now, I’m trying to learn some Japanese and am busy implementing the ceramic techniques I learned at the EKWC into my studio. After January, I’ll delve into more theoretical research on Japanese culture and ceramics.
Written by Wouter van den Eijkel
Interview with Filipp Groubnov
Eight years ago, Filipp Groubnov moved from Belarus to the Netherlands. At the Royal Academy in The Hague he discovered that he could express many of his interests in installations. He prefers to be in the border area of various artistic and scientific disciplines. “There I find space for my own story and the opportunity to discuss all kinds of questions that occupy me. There are simply too many things that inspire me to put them in a single system.” This also applies to his visual language, which is a unique mix of figuration and abstraction, although according to Groubnov this is ultimately a matter of scale. His work is shown at Art Rotterdam by Josilda da Conceição.
Let’s start at the beginning. Before studying fine arts, you studied physics. What made you switch?
Even before studying fine arts, I was very interested in art. I have always been involved in some sort of creative activity, from graffiti to drawing and painting. I think the main reason why I didn’t choose to study art initially was because I didn’t know anyone who followed that route and, at the time in Belarus, I didn’t really consider an art career as a possibility. On the other hand, I was interested in science and I imagined studying physics as a kind of creative process, too. But one year into the programme, I realised that it was very formal and uninspiring. At some point, I simply couldn’t do it any longer and that’s when I decided to switch.
You moved from Belarus to the Netherlands in 2015. What kind of work were you making at the time?
When I moved to the Netherlands in 2015, I wasn’t very familiar with contemporary art. In fact, I was barely familiar with contemporary art at all because it isn’t well represented in Belarus. At the time, there was only one gallery that showed contemporary art in Minsk and I also lacked a context to truly understand it. I was mostly influenced by early 20th and 19th century styles like Impressionism and Surrealism, and was mostly focused on painting and drawing.
Would you say there’s a different approach to art here than in Belarus? If so, was it hard to get used to?
It was definitely hard to get used to the idea of ‘contemporary art’ and what it entails. I often struggled to understand what the teachers expected from me and was also missing a huge number of cultural references since around the 60s. So, it definitely took some time to catch up, but I feel like it also gave me a unique, almost ‘outsider’ perspective to contemporary art.
Your work isn’t political in nature. Given the mass protests after the 2020 general elections in Belarus and the war in Ukraine, as well as the role of Belarus in this, I can’t help but wonder if it is hard to stay away from politics in your work?
For a long time, I’ve had this idea that I wanted to stay away from ‘politics’ in my work, but this is changing, especially due to the events that you mention. I think that I no longer consider ‘political’ as something separate from other facets of life. It is just part of the condition that shapes many complex relationships between human, matter, mind, etc. In my last work, for example, my personal story and the current situation in Ukraine becomes part of the narrative and an essential element of the project.
I’ve read that you started out by painting on canvass. Today, you primarily make installations. What happened along the way?
That’s right, my more ‘conscious’ artistic journey started with canvas and oils. The switch to sculptural installations happened while studying in the Netherlands. I was enrolled in a course on ‘expanded sculpture’, which inspired me to experiment with installation and different media. You might say it opened my eyes to the fact that sculpture and installation can be so many different things. I then began to be aware of all the possibilities to combine materials, images and sounds. I slowly starting realising that in the field on installations, I can combine all my interests in one. To this day, I am in awe of all the possibilities of installations. I still feel like I have only scraped the surface of this discipline.
What would you say is the main theme of your work?
I think an essential (central?) theme of my work is to reject the idea of a ‘main theme’. My interest is in multiplicity and approaching any subject as a kind of choir of detuned, human and non-human, living and non-living voices. What I choose to talk about changes from one project to the other, but what stays the same is my approach to positioning things like personal emotions and narratives in the same ensemble as, for example, the erosion produced by water passing through the landscape. Right now, I am quite fascinated by the subject of war and violence, but it is really through the relationships and interactions I create between the story and different materials that the subject unfolds in front of me and takes on all the complex facets that bring it to life.
Your installations have a mix of abstract and figurative elements. How did you arrive at this visual language?
This developed very organically. I think because, on one hand, I am interested in rather ‘abstract’ concepts like those found in physics and science and, on the other hand, I am also very interested in personal and concrete experiences. Ultimately, my approach is that there is no absolute distinction between what can be called ‘abstract’ and ‘figurative’. In physics, for example, we can imagine ‘particles’, which are described in classical physics as discrete concrete entities. But, if we consider the very small scale described in quantum physics, these particles are more like a very abstract ‘field’ without any clear boundaries. So, figurative or abstract may merely be a matter of scale.
How do you go about assembling your installations? Do you have a preconceived idea and then find the right attributes or do you work with whatever happens to be around?
Every installation is a combination of the two. I like to juxtapose some very meticulously crafted elements with ready-made and sometimes more ‘random’ objects that I find. For example, in the installation The Garden of Iarthly Delights, I have placed together a sculptural head of Narges Mohammadi with construction material from a shop. While the construction material was something you can easily buy ready-made, the head on the other hand was a result of a long process of 3D-scanning Narges, 3D-printing the model, casting it, etc. I find the combination of deliberate and spontaneous actions very enriching for the work.
Some of your work has titles that refer to philosophy and biology, such as Natural Philosophy and The Garden of larthly Delights. Are philosophy and biology the main sources of inspiration for you?
In a way, yes, but I think that ‘philosophy’ and ‘biology’ sound so formal. Both of these disciplines are a way of studying phenomena, a systematic approach to research and communication. I am mostly interested in researching areas where these systems start to lose their solid foundation. Within the blurry boundaries of disciplines and systems, I find space for my own story and all kinds of questions that intrigue me. But at the end of the day, there are too many things that inspire me to put them in a single system.
Your installation The Garden of larthly Delights contained living species. I can imagine it can be hard to display in a presentation. So, why do it?
Yes, you are very right. Working with living organism is quite challenging within the context of art exhibitions, which are normally geared towards a different kind of art experience. Most art (or, more specifically, fine art) spaces have a tradition that is based on art objects being static, inanimate ‘beings’. In that context, presenting a living creature requires a completely different set of rules. I find that tension very interesting and it opens up new ways of thinking about art as active participants in the space.
Congratulations on your presentation at Art Rotterdam! What can we expect?
Thank you! Currently, I am working on a project in collaboration with Highlight Delft festival and New Media Center of TU Delft. It revolves around the subject of war and the area of France where the ‘Great War’ left a lasting mark on the landscape. You can expect to see new work with a combination of a digital post-war environment shown on screens and physical sculptural elements. I don’t want to reveal too much because, as a visual artist, I always believe it is better to see for yourself than to hear an explanation. I am also experimenting with glass paintings that might find their way into the final presentation.
Right now, you are at the start of your career. What do you hope to have achieved in the next five years?
There are a lot of things I want to achieve or get involved with. I really hope to participate in residencies that can give me a chance to work with researchers or scientific institutions. I am very interested in interdisciplinary collaboration and, right now, one of my main goals is to establish such partnerships. I would also really like to present my work in more international venues. I have interacted with Dutch audiences for some time now and I am very curious to see how people from other countries and cultural backgrounds interact with my work. I think that would teach me a lot.
Written by Wouter van den Eijkel
AKINCI will present work by Lungiswa Gqunta at Art Rotterdam. In her practice, the South African artist explores the elusive world of dreams. She sees these dreams as a place where important knowledge can be gained that is overlooked or excluded in other places. Her work was recently on display at the Liverpool Biennial, at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and earlier this year, she was invited to submit a proposal for the famous High Line in New York.
In her multidisciplinary practice, which includes performance, installation, sculpture and printmaking, she draws attention to the complex and ongoing ways in which colonialism and patriarchy shape South Africa’s contemporary political, cultural and social landscape — and continues to create systematic inequality until this day. She highlights, among other things, African systems of knowledge and belief that were structurally excluded during the apartheid regime.
In her most recent work, Gqunta explores the concept of sleep and dreams on the basis of her Xhosa heritage. Dreams function as a connection with her ancestors and are a place where knowledge can be gained. Her multi-sensory and layered work is informed by this dream world and explores themes such as landscape, violence, resistance, collective healing, identity, female power, the domestic space, traditions and rituals, history and collective memory, privilege, globalisation and capitalism. Recurring materials in her work are materials that could also serve as a weapon in a different context or form, such as glass, concrete, barbed wire and more specifically: the more aggressive razor wire. They are symbolic and emotionally charged materials that refer to the townships, which were reserved for the black inhabitants of South Africa during apartheid. Gqunta also regularly uses white sheets in her works, which refer to a recognisable ritual: the processing of the laundry and the folding of the sheets, traditionally a moment when knowledge was shared between the female members of her family, but at the same time a potential moment for secret talks and resistance during apartheid.
Her recent solo exhibition ‘Sleep in Witness’, that was on display at AKINCI this autumn, was previously presented in a different form at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. In both exhibitions, part of the floor was covered with cracked clay and sand, carefully shaped by the artist’s feet. As a viewer, you were forced to walk over it in order to enter the exhibition, which made the instability under your feet tangible. In combination with blue structures of transparent, hand-blown glass — reminiscent of rocks or water — they formed the site-specific installation “Zinodaka”. The video work “Rolling Mountains Dream” in the exhibition referred to remembering and learning from dreams. And the works “Instigation in Waiting I & II” referred to the ways in which colonial oppressors introduced new plant species and removed existing ones as a way of controlling the environment, a tradition that lives on in a different form in conservatories and botanic gardens.
Her room-filling installation “Ntabamanzi”, which consists of wave-like barbed wire wrapped in bright blue fabric, was on show in the Centraal Museum this summer. The large-scale work refers to the reclaiming of healing water rituals that were prohobited during the apartheid regime, but it also challenges the viewer to think about freedom of movement in a space — and how that is not as self-evident for everyone. The name is a combination of two Xhosa words: ntaba (mountain) and manzi (water) and the installation was born in a dream of the artist. Gqunta then worked for months on the execution of the work, after which only the sharp parts still portrude.
Gqunta isn’t afraid to ruffle some feathers and creates installations that cause discomfort and confrontation in white viewers, while other works offer care of the mental health of black viewers. She feels that it’s important to have certain conversations, no matter how uncomfortable they may be. In a video for the Henry Moore Institute, she states: “I think of it as like trapping someone into a conversation. No one’s gonna go willingly to a place that is difficult, that is hard, and so you gotta reel them in. The aim is for the work to follow people home somehow. To haunt them. [Some of my other] installations are I guess the complete opposite, where it’s about rest and recharging.”
Gqunta studied sculpture at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, followed by a master’s degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town. She completed residencies at the prestigious Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Gasworks in London and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, a research institute, library and museum affiliated with Harvard University. She currently lives and works in Cape Town. Her work has been shown in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, during Manifesta 12 and the Istanbul Biennale and has been included in the collections of institutions such as KADIST in Paris, the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and Zeitz MOCAA – Cape Town Museum of Contemporary Art.
Written by Flor Linckens
At Art Rotterdam, you will spot the work of hundreds of artists from all over the world. In this series, we highlight a number of artists who will show remarkable work during the fair.
Last December, the Belgian newspaper De Morgen presented a list of the 10 most exciting exhibitions in Belgium in 2022. The entire programme of the young Pizza Gallery in Antwerp was singled out for praise by the three art journalists behind the article, but they paid particular attention to the solo presentation of Jonas Dehnen. At Art Rotterdam, the work of the German artist will be on display in the New Art Section.
Painting and drawing are central to Jonas Dehnen’s practice, but he also creates installations and sculptures, depending on specific exhibition contexts. Dehnen takes much of his visual raw material from the communities amongst which he grew up. He spent his formative years in both Germany and the United Kingdom, and has now been living in Belgium for several years. The artist is fascinated by the way in which communities construct a visual identity using symbols and traditions, from pub signs to carnival floats, from vernacular architecture to folk paintings, and other elements of what could be called ‘visual patois’. Which role is reserved for the collective and which for the individual, within that mechanism? And how does globalisation fit into that? Dehnen abstracts, fragments and re-combines different signifiers in his paintings, creating new characters and idiosyncratic protagonists. The pictures emerge from a prolonged process of trial and error: Layering, erasure, additive and subtractive painterly gestures, and the repurposing of underlying image fragments.
At Art Rotterdam, Dehnen presents a series of paintings that derive their imagery from romanticism in a broad sense. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘Der Sandmann’ serves as a source for motifs, such as a mechanised eye, hands and wheels. These enigmatic structures and circuitries hint at designs for a primitive automaton. They also offer veiled visual references to past works in the artist’s oeuvre, and to paintings that hung in his childhood home, thereby establishing feedback loops of painterly gestures and ideas. There is an entanglement between the physical material of the work, and the image that took shape within it. Thinking and doing collapse into one another to become a singular mode of being in the world. The works are maps of themselves, map and territory both, thought-maps looping back into themselves in an infinite regression. At times the paint is applied as though to a location on a flat surface, and at other times at a certain depth within an image. The flatness of the object and the artifice of a painted picture are continually toyed with.
In 2019, Dehnen obtained his master’s degree in painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, under the tutelage of Vincent Geyskens. Previously he completed a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the University of Lancaster, UK. After graduating, Dehnen was invited for a residency at FLACC in Genk and last year, he was nominated for the PrixFintro Prize, for which he shared second prize. His work has been exhibited at Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, claptrap in Antwerp, and Social Harmony in Ghent, among others.
Flor Linckens
No man is an island: artist Klaas Rommelaere turns family and friends into art
Artist Klaas Rommelaere is currently causing a stir with his Dark Uncles series, consisting of a parade of life-sized embroidered dolls of family and friends. For Art Rotterdam, Rommelaere made no fewer than ten new works to be displayed at Madé van Krimpen’s booth. “I am a loner. The paradox is that my work almost always involves people. I’ve even made them in doll form.”
Rommelaere (Belgium, 1986) studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. During his studies, he did internships with Henrik Vibskov and Raf Simons, but soon realised that the fashion world was not a place where he could act on his ideas. Inspired by films, comics, books and personal experiences, Rommelaere began translating his ideas into visual work using the tools and materials he knew best: the needle, thread, wool and yarn.
Do you already know which works you will be showing at Art Rotterdam?
At Art Rotterdam, I’ll be showing works under the name of Dark Uncles. This is a project that started a few years ago when I came up with the idea to create a procession with people who have influenced me over the years, from family to friends. They wear embroideries of memories and photos and are completely covered with embroidery. The project has already been shown in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, with a different set-up each time. For Art Rotterdam, I made ten new works. I always find it interesting to work on an idea and see how far you can take it.
For those who don’t know your work: you create works of textile, embroidery or in the form of life-sized dolls. Why have you chosen this medium?
I became familiar with embroidery and handicrafts during my fashion studies. That study programme was my second Bachelor’s and Master’s and I was looking for an easy and direct way to convert my graphics into textiles without too much cost or hassle. So, as early as my first year, I began embroidering with wool and canvas from a local thrift store. In the years after that, I began exploring another technique. This is how my artistic process has evolved, which also fits my way of thinking. Handiwork takes a lot of time, and that time lets me think about my work and how it will end up. It’s like building a house: you lay brick by brick and in the end, you have an entire house or work of art. Completing a work or project can take anywhere from six months to two years.
You’ve titled the series Dark Uncles, a Swiss folklore term for doubles. It consists of life-sized dolls of family and friends. Why did you make the people in your immediate environment the subject of your work?
When I began working with canvas and flags, my grandmother always took care of the finishing touches. This was in Ingelmunster and a little ways down the road, there was a beautiful white wall where I always took pictures. The cloth always had to be carried like a flag to that location. My grandfather and a neighbour usually did this. I also took pictures of that little procession and always found it to be a strong image. As I’ve grown older, I sometimes enjoy looking back to see how far I’ve come and which people have influenced me. We’re so obsessed with moving forward these days that we sometimes forget our roots. No man is an island.
I’ve read that as many as 100 people have contributed to the Dark Uncles series. How does such a collaboration come about and where do you find so many people who are willing to embroider for you?
The first part of Dark Uncles was made entirely during the pandemic. At first, the idea was to do everything in workshops, but then the pandemic started. That’s why the museum made a call for volunteers who wanted to embroider. Many people were at home with a lot of time, so the response was massive. We sent everything by mail. I was in contact with them by WhatsApp and email. I did not see most of the people who helped out until the opening. From this project, a new group of ‘madammen’ has emerged, in addition to my first group in Merksem and Ingelmunster.
Embroidery takes a lot of skill and time. It is certainly not a fast technique. Do you consider your work a criticism of the fast-paced art world and our society in general?
It’s not a criticism because I didn’t consciously choose it. It’s just how I work. But I do think it feels different to people who see the work because it is something tangible, something practical and you can tell it has been created with care, time and skill. Visitors are always amazed because it looks different in real life than in pictures due to the details and texture of the canvas. Since it takes so long to finish a work, I can put in a lot of details, so that you cannot ‘read’ the work completely at a single glance. I often hear from people who have my work hanging in their homes that they see something new almost every day.
I read that you are inspired by cult films. Which films and why do these particular films appeal to you?
I try to see all films that are shown in cinemas and luckily, I have a subscription. Usually, it is the atmosphere of a film that appeals to me most. When I’m working on a project, I’m open to things that can ‘feed’ the project and make it stronger. When I was creating Dark Uncles, I travelled to Tokyo and became fascinated with Hayoa Miyazaki (co-founder and artistic director of the famous Japanese animation studio Ghibli, ed.). I’ve watched documentaries about him and read his biography and have learned that we think exactly the same way about life and the artistic process. I believe film is the ultimate art form.
Would you say that the main theme of your work is the relationship with your immediate environment?
I’m not much of a social person. I like to be alone and only need a few people who I see regularly. Apart from that, I’m a loner. The paradox is that there are almost always people in my work; I’ve even made them in puppet form. I think my work is a way to communicate with people, to feel connected to the ‘world’ as it were.
Wouter van den Eijkel
Salim Bayri – The MC of collision
What happens when opposing situations, technologies and cultures collide? Salim Bayri creates such collisions all the time, and often with a smile. With the digital environment as his point of departure, his work takes on various forms. You might call him the MC of the cultural-technological clash. Bayri has been nominated for this year’s NN Art Award.
In search of the core
Salim Bayri (Casablanca, Morocco, 1992) won the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize last autumn. He was nominated by writer and jury member Abdelkader Benali, who praised him for his versatile and elusive body of work. Benali hits the nail on the head, as the core of Bayri’s work is difficult to define. “You sort of walk around it,” Bayri said in a recent interview with the magazine Mister Motley. “It would also be a failure to seize it as it were, because I would then be destroying the work and I don’t want to do that.”
Finding a core is also difficult because Bayri can rightly be called a multidisciplinary artist. He creates videos, installations, wearables, apps, drawings, digital prints and more. Bayri usually starts with a digital drawing, but is not very interested in the differences between online and offline expression. His interests are broader. “In essence, he allows opposing images, situations, technologies, cultural practices and phenomena to collide and then looks at the result with a smile. That creates a striking openness in all kinds of respects,” says Bayri’s gallery owner Kees van Gelder.
Van Gelder first came across Bayri’s work in 2017 when he visited Kimball Gunnar Holth’s graduation show in Groningen’s A-kerk. He was immediately sold. “Salim stood in front of his installation/scaffolding, which he called ‘Smartshop’, and sang towards the sculpture through an amplifier in Arabic, Dutch, French and Spanish, improvising descriptions of what he literally envisioned. The singing tone was clearly the North African multi-tone of the Maghreb. A fabulous presentation.”
Van Gelder is not the only one who has noticed Bayri’s work, given that his work is guaranteed to attract a lot of attention. Since completing his residency at the Rijksakademie, it has already been shown in the Netherlands at CODA, Framer Framed, W139, La Capella in Barcelona and Fondazione Merz in Turin. In addition to the Volkskrant Visual Art Prize, Bayri also won the Charlotte Köhler Prize awarded by the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund last year. At the end of January, Dead Skin Cash, a duo exhibition with Ghita Skali, will be opening in W139 in Amsterdam, where visitors can sell dead skin cells for money.
Code switching
Considering his background, the fact that toying with context, conventions and expectations is Bayri’s second nature is hardly surprising. Bayri grew up in Casablanca, where he attended a Spanish school. “I constantly heard Arabic and French all around me, while everything online was in English. As a young boy, I learned about Carlos II at school, after which I walked home along streets where everyone spoke Darija, and once at home, heard about the price of baguettes in French news. In my head, I switch constantly, searching for the common denominator.”
He went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree from the Escola Massana in Barcelona, a Master’s degree in Media, Art Design and Technology from the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen and did a residency at the Rijksakademie, where he ultimately made a presentation similar to the one in the A-kerk in 2020.
Sad Ali
The most famous example of an object Bayri places in a different context is his alter ego Sad Ali, short for Sad Alien. It is no coincidence that the word Alien is a homonym that can refer to an alien life form as well as someone from another country. Sad Ali is a wordless, sad cartoon character who regularly appears in Bayri’s work and originated as a digital drawing, a computer file.
In terms of design, Sad Ali is like something straight out of a Pixar movie. Like cartoon characters, Sad Ali is a hollow shape. He has no heart, bones or brains. “So, these shapes are like containers. Everything that moves on the screen is hollow. Sad Ali is also empty; it doesn’t talk or say anything and has no agenda of its own. But there it is, and its presence is so fragile that it becomes the elephant in the room,” says Bayri. The latter is evident from the diverse reactions that Sad Ali elicits from visitors. While one visitor laughs about it, the other finds him terrifying.
ChatGPT’s analogue counterpart
For many people, the self-learning chatbot ChatGPT is a fantastic tool. You can ask the chatbot almost any kind of question and receive an answer in a complete sentence. But for an artist who toys with conventions and works from a digital environment, it is nothing short of a godsend.
In addition to a presentation of his Smartshop, Bayri has also considered presenting an analogue counterpart to the chatbot at Art Rotterdam. He originally intended for gallerist Van Gelder to sit in a chair in front of a white wall and hand out sheets of paper, each with a different question. “Unfortunately, there was not enough room for this on the exhibition floor, but Bayri is looking into possibilities to do something similar,” says Van Gelder.
Wouter van den Eijkel
At Art Rotterdam, you will spot the work of hundreds of artists from all over the world. In this series we highlight a number of artists who will show remarkable work during the fair. During Art Rotterdam, Upstream Gallery will present work by Noor Nuyten, Kévin Bray (who was nominated for the NN Art Award), Frank Ammerlaan and Marinus Boezem. In their practice, these artists all explore a connection between material, physical worlds and immaterial or digital worlds. Experimentation in terms of materials and techniques plays a significant role in that.
Marinus Boezem (1934) is considered to be one of the most influential Dutch conceptual artists of the past century, alongside Ger van Elk and Jan Dibbets. In the 1960s, Boezem discovered the artistic potential of elusive elements such as air, weather, movement and light, resulting in a series of exciting, intelligent and immaterial works that often contain a powerful, poetic and humorous charge.
His work “3 Seconds of Dutch Light” from 1976 offers a striking illustration. Most people will think of 17th century paintings when they hear the term ‘Dutch light’. Boezem offered a more conceptual twist to the genre, when he exposed a sheet of photosensitive photo paper to Dutch light for three seconds, after which he mounted it on an aluminum plate. Three full seconds of light, however, will result in a completely monochromatic black sheet of paper. The 17th-century painters who traveled en masse to our coast may have managed to capture a representation or interpretation of light, but Boezem’s work actually captures Dutch light — as a material or ingredient, even if it is no longer visible to the viewer.
The idea is central to Boezem’s practice, alongside a curious imagination. This means that he works in a multitude of materials and disciplines. In 2021, the Kröller-Müller Museum presented his ‘shows’, based on a series of fifteen drawings that he made between 1964 and 1969. These are conceptual blueprints for installations that could possibly be realised. Boezem sent them to art institutions or presented them in person. Some concepts were implemented at the time, other sketches first found a physical form in the exhibition at the Kröller-Müller Museum.
Boezem wants to make art that is close to life, in part because museums do not always invest in their relationship with (and relevance within) society. In 1969 he was co-initiator of the rebellious and leading exhibition ‘On loose screws’ in the Stedelijk Museum. One of the works he exhibited was “Bedding”, for which he hung pillows and sheets from all the windows of the museum. With a wink he symbolised both a breath of fresh air through the museum and a recognisable household tradition. At the same time, Boezem manages to make something immaterial visible: a breeze. Moreover, the artist effectively blurs the boundaries between the almost sacred museum space and the public space, presenting art as a bridge between the museum and society.
Boezem would later make several works of art for the public space. His “Green Cathedral” in Almere was voted the most popular outdoor artwork in the Netherlands — wedding ceremonies are even performed there. The work consists of 174 Italian poplars that form the floor plan of the Notre-Dame cathedral of Reims, true to size. A little further on, the exact same shape has been removed from a wooded area, reshaping the floor plan of the structure, but now in negative space. The cathedral is a recurring element in Boezem’s oeuvre and the artist also joked that a new city, rising from the polder, deserved a cathedral. Other recurring themes in his practice include the universe and cartography.
Boezem’s conceptual work is also related to the arte povera of the 1960s and 1970s, an originally Italian art movement in which artists resisted the commercialisation of the art world, among other things. On the one hand, materials were chosen that represented no financial value — such as earth or twigs — and on the other hand, the often perishable or immaterial art of these makers was sometimes difficult to trade as a commercial product. The movement was extremely influential, with significant parallels in other international art forms of the time; from land art and minimal art to conceptual art.
Boezem’s work has been exhibited at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Van Abbemuseum, Kunsthalle Bern, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, among others. His work has been collected by institutions like the MoMA, Museum Voorlinden, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Stedelijk Museum, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and the Kröller-Muller Museum. During Art Rotterdam, the work of Marinus Boezem will be on display in the booth of Upstream Gallery.
Flor Linckens
Dearest Strangers: on the cyclical interaction between absence and presence
At Projections, the Antwerp gallery Fred & Ferry shows the video installation Dearest Strangers by the Belgian artist Lydia Hannah. She made the video installation on behalf of the Antwerp Hospital Network, intended for employees and patients. At first she was hesitant to accept the assignment, because her work has little to do with the medical world. Finally she decided to film the trees around her house 4 times a day for 4 seasons. It resulted in a film to the rhythm of nature. A subtle attempt to break through the dominance of efficient and purposeful action on the basis of the slow changes of the season and to escape from everyday reality.
Lydia Hannah, in full Lydia Hannah Debeer (1992), is a Belgian visual artist and musician. Her practice explores the spaces between image and sound. She creates immersive landscapes through video, music and live and recorded soundscapes. She subtly peels back the different layers of reality to show the cyclical interaction between absence and presence.
Gallery Fred & Ferry has been working with Lydia since the opening of the gallery in 2016, says Frederik Vergaert: “Initially, we invited her as ‘house sound artist.’ She was given the key and alarm code from the start and was free to come and go as she pleased; both during and outside regular opening hours.” The result was a presentation during the Antwerp Art Weekend in the form of a soundscape, as a video installation and a live performance. Lydia Hannah graduated from LUCA School of Arts in 2014 and obtained a postgraduate degree from HISK in 2016, both in Ghent. She is currently doing PhD research at PXL – Uhasselt on liminal states of mind and their sensory manifestations.
You made Dearest Strangers in 2021 for the employees and patients of Antwerp hospitals. Does the pandemic play a role in this work?
The invitation from Beatrijs Eemans, curator of the project, dates back to before the pandemic. At the time, she was working on ZNA Kunstenplatform, a contemporary art integration within ZNA. When the pandemic hit, the need for a space that would accommodate contemplation and interaction only increased.
What effect do you hope Dearest Strangers has on healthcare workers, patients and the general public?
I hope that viewers let themselves be carried away by the rhythm of nature and in this way come to a delay, a break from the daily and task-oriented. The film is certainly not exclusively ‘soothing’ across the board. Rather, it is a contemplation of the cyclical movement that we are all subject to and how it can affect our feelings, our health, our needs.
Conceptually, the work is quite far removed from the day-to-day activities in hospitals. Why did you choose to implement this idea in particular?
When asked to create a new work for a hospital, I hesitated. I did not see myself as being able to make a portrait about care or to make a specific therapeutic work. However, Beatrijs Eemans reassured me and made it clear that I would have complete artistic freedom. That I was free to interact with the infrastructure and employees or not.
The idea of taking the nature around our house as a subject was already brewing in the back of my mind before this assignment. The personal, fledgling connection – I had just moved from an urban to a forested area – with the trees that greet me every day and yet are foreign to me, as the new scientific discourse on the influence nature has on our health (even images of nature), propelled my fascination. Among other things, research has shown that spending time in a wooded area helps our body’s immune system by increasing the number and activity of disease-fighting cells. The number of NK (“Natural Killer” cells of the immune system) and the substances released by them are significantly higher on days when people are immersed in trees, and patients who have a view of trees or houseplants in their room have healed faster.
Watch Dearest Strangers, 2022 here
Your gallerist Frederik Vergaert states that your work expresses a ‘cyclical interaction between absence and presence’. Can you explain what he means by that?
It is rather by looking back at the works that I have already made that this fascination f has become clear to me, and yet I do not want to pin myself down to that. Now that I have started a PhD in the arts at PXL – Uhasselt on liminal states of mind and their sensory manifestations, I am grateful to be able to dive deeper into the investigative aspect of my work. I really like the concept of “the fertile void” that Julia Samuel coined: “In the movement between where we were and where we are heading, we need to allow space, time just to be, a time for not knowing: the fertile void”. It is this contradiction of standing still in order to move that fascinates me and has pushed me towards the visual arts. I myself am most grateful for those moments when the beauty, complexity, or power of a work of art, performance, or music has moved me so emotionally and physically that I have had no need to “understand” it intellectually. That the experience itself has already changed something and has brought about a wordless knowing.
You are also a musician; does that background affect your video work? For example, does this translate into a certain way of looking or a certain rhythm?
Because the way I make music has grown in parallel with my practice as an artist, I believe it’s a mutual influence. I have not had any formal training in music at a conservatory, for example, which means that this aspect has also grown very intuitively and is still growing. For a while music was mainly part of my work as a soundtrack to a video, but that is now growing more and more into an equal role. I often edit my videos to a certain rhythm, but I also compose my music in a very visual way.
How do you work and what does your studio look like?
How I go about it varies, but a certain sluggishness and a long run-up phase usually typical. The topics I choose and the way I approach them are very intuitive. Those rare moments when the puzzle suddenly fits are interspersed with long periods of watching, listening, reading and taking a step back.
My studio looks especially warm and cosy, it has always been that way. I remember that when I was at HISK, both colleagues and guest lecturers were always amazed at how ‘homely’ my studio was. It seems that I need that warmth in order to create. There are a lot of plants, a seat at the window that looks out at the trees, my harp, piano and some electronics and I have a high desk at the other window where I edit video and sound. On the wall hang some test images and sentences from books that reverberate or resonate with something I’m working on. I get a lot of inspiration from books, not directly, but in the form of suddenly recognizing something that I’ve been trying to articulate in images for a long time.
What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on the new work for Art Rotterdam and the next stop is the solo exhibition at Fred and Ferry in September. I may also show work again during Antwerp Art, at the invitation of Winnie Claessens, but that remains to be seen whether that is 100% certain. I also contribute to the soundtrack of Jana Coorevits’ new film matter on its dance through time, for which we went to Death Valley for 3 weeks before the summer to record. In the meantime, as I mentioned, I’m starting a PhD in the arts, so both creating new work by September and diving into my artistic research is what will keep me busy for the next few months.
By Wouter van den Eijkel
During Art Rotterdam, NN group will present the NN Art Award for the seventh time: to a contemporary art talent with an authentic visual language and an innovative approach. NN Group has been a partner of Art Rotterdam since 2017 and has been awarding an incentive award every year since then. An annually changing jury of art professionals makes a selection of four promising talents, from which a winner is ultimately chosen. The conditions are clear: it concerns artists who have been trained in the Netherlands and who show their work during Art Rotterdam. NN Group will purchases one or more works from the nominees for its corporate collection. Last year, the NN Art Award (worth €10,000) was won by the Lithuanian artist Vytautas Kumža. We’ve interviewed him to find out what winning the prize has meant to him and how he has experienced the past period.
How did it feel to win the NN Art Award?
Vytautas Kumža: “Honestly, I was really surprised to win the NN Art Award. I had known work by other nominees for years and it was just great to be included in such an impressive group of artists and to present artworks together. I was the youngest of the group, so it felt great that the jury believes in me and sees the importance of continuing my practice — and that they are also supporting it with this award.”
What has the past year been like for you?
VK: “The past year has been really intense and productive. I had a busy season and many art fairs, new works were presented at June Art Fair in Basel, Art Dubai, Enter Art Fair, Unfair and I have ended the year with a solo exhibition in Vilnius. I feel like I did develop a new way of working last year even though it was quite a full year.
I have traveled quite a lot during the past year and every place I visit leaves an impression or aesthetic in my mind. In my work, I don’t photograph people, because I’m more interested in gestures that people leave behind. So what is happening and what I see around me certainly leaves traces that are later translated into my practice, sometimes in a more subtle or direct way.”
How did the works that you showed during Art Rotterdam come about? Do you follow a specific process?
VK: “The series of works that I presented in the NN Art Award booth was inspired by the imaginations of people, that were created as a result of the recent times and its stories-flooded screens; in which urban spaces were taken out of social relations. I have noticed in the world of the post, the new form of imagination was gaining momentum, but its contours were blurring. By rethinking various everyday processes, I constructed photographic and glass constructions of found objects and memories and created several possible scenarios that deceive the gaze and question the logic of its view of the viewer. With this confusing instability I ask the question: ”Can observation change the nature of things or give them a different meaning?”. While leaving visible “seams and edges” in multi-layered photographic plans in the same way as lead sealed glass pieces, I created seamless stained glass constructions. This transparent obstacle, between the print and the viewer, becomes an indicator that we are looking through one’s constructed ‘filter’ of vision.”
Are there any particular things you were able to achieve thanks to the prize money?
VK: “I was able to create and produce a lot of new artworks, so all the prize money was invested in that. There wasn’t even a question of where and when it should be spent, so I did it with confidence and I’m really glad I didn’t have to think too much about it, that I could just do it and see the result, which in the end I was happy about. In the past year I have started to experiment more with different ways of incorporating glass and combining it with other objects. I have also expanded my practice in a more sculptural way. And I’m glad that there were a lot of opportunities to present it last year. During Art Rotterdam 2023, some of the most recent works will be presented, followed later in the year by a solo exhibition at the Martin van Zomeren gallery.”
What is your ultimate piece of advice for young artists?
VK: “It’s a tough question because there isn’t one ultimate piece of advice, because everyone needs something different and has their own unique path. Although I would just say to just keep making work and to not stop, even if it sometimes seems impossible to do so. I believe that as an artist, you have to get used to ups and downs in every stage of your career. It’s just a matter of making your practice a part of your routine and taking it seriously, while being open to mistakes, accidents and suggestions.”
Interview by Flor Linckens
During Art Rotterdam, you will see the work of hundreds of artists from all over the world. In this series, we highlight a number of artists who will show remarkable work during the fair.
In his practice, the young French artist Kévin Bray explores the boundaries of various disciplines, such as video, (3D) photography, (digital) painting, computer graphics, animation, sculpture, graphic design and sound design. He then looks for ways to stretch these boundaries. The experiment plays a significant role in that. Bray then applies the implicit and explicit (visual) codes and rules of one medium to the other. How do they influence each other and how do they change the meaning of the artwork?
In his practice, Bray seems to refer in equal measure to art history, apocalyptic and dystopian stories and science fiction. He is also fascinated by fiction as a construct. When you watch a film, you often don’t realise how many factors have to come together perfectly to create a credible whole: from sound and art direction to visual language, camera work and special effects. Bray hopes to alert us to the fictional and deconstructed components in his work. He makes us aware of the underlying materials, manipulations and technologies that he has used to arrive at the end result. He mixes eerie and surrealistic elements and plays with the boundaries of the analog and the virtual. This creates a certain discomfort for the viewer, which makes for an exciting viewing experience. He uses both traditional techniques — including trompe l’oeil special effects from the world of cinema — as well as the most recent technologies.
Bray: “In my work I try to be a generalist of technologies, tools, and media. I believe that they are a language or at least an extension of it. I try to observe and learn from as many tools deriving from a diversity of systems, ranging from paintings, sculpting, writing, 3D modeling, filming, animating, composing, drawing methodologies and design to storytelling music making and sound design. Of course, I don’t master any of them but I try to understand and bridge all of those forms of language in unexpected ways, in order to encompass new realities and new perspectives on the shapes our narratives (social and political beliefs) are taking.”
His most recent works in “The Collective Shadow” consist of a series of sculptures, paintings and video projections that interact through different narrative techniques, to form a layered and hybrid multimedia installation.
Bray trained as a graphic designer at L’Ésaab in France, followed by a period at the design department of the Sandberg Institute and a residency at the prestigious Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has exhibited his work at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Foam Amsterdam, het HEM, the Dordrechts Museum and the K Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, among others. Bray made commissioned work for institutions including Kunstinstituut Melly and the Nieuwe Instituut.
During Art Rotterdam, the work of Kévin Bray will be on show in the booth of Upstream Gallery in the Main Section.
By Flor Linckens
