A bright pink page of the book drew me to it. It was lying in a showcase in the Stedelijk Museum amongst many other objects and flyers, but the brightness of the opened page made the book stand out. On the left page you could see a picture of an Indian girl sitting behind a table. On the table in between her hands was a small heap of bright pink powder, almost the same color as the bindi on her forehead. The page on the right was a page of bright pink textile.

This book (put together by Nikki Gonnissen and Thomas Widdershoven) shows works and gives a feel of the work by Fransje Killaars, a dutch artist who graduated from the Rijksacadamie in 1984. In the beginning of her career she mainly made paintings, but it is her later work, her textiles, which attracts me most.

I read in an article about the Dutch artist that she is fascinated by the power of color, the relationship between people and textiles and the way textiles are bound up in daily life. I was able to take a closer look at the book in the library of the Stedelijk Museum and I was surprised to see how much more attractive Fransje Killaar’s work is portrayed in the book than for example the images on Google search. It was then that I realized that like Fransje Killaars I was not only fascinated by the power of color, but especially the combination of colors in our daily lives. Seeing Fransje Killaars’ textiles transforming an old attic space into a bohemian paradise,
or seeing her carpets thrown over a washing line hung amongst palms seems to play much more on the imagination rather than seeing the fabrics placed in the middle of a white clean gallery space.

In a gallery space the work is merely about colors; about the contrast between them and the brightness that a color can have. Yet for me the excitement comes when you find bright colors in someone’s kitchen, when colors pop up amongst plants, how sunlight can give a color different shades and all colors on the knit sweaters of the Rietveld students in the winter.

I caught myself playing around with this fascination on my guilty pleasure, Instagram.

I try to eat an orange every day, but before I get to peeling it I like to take a picture of the bright orange against the clothing I am wearing that day. I have realized that by doing so I put a frame around a moment or literally make a snapshot of the moment. It may be only esthetics, but for me it is quite a luxury that you can find such esthetics in everyday life.

The combination of color and the sense of touch is another element, which I find rather appealing. Holding the skin of an orange against a green, wool knit sweater, running your hands over a an orange shag rug or a purple suede dress is often much more exciting than looking at the same colors on a 2d canvas. Do not get me wrong; I have nothing against the great color field painters, who can use colors in a fragile and moving way. These painters succeed in translating emotions into color, into paint, but when it comes to the exuberance of a color or the contrast between them I think this can be best portrayed in a more hands on manner.

The brightness and the vividness of the use in colors in Fransje Killaar’s textiles seem to be more about the celebration of life, about the joy that a blotch of color can add to every day scenery. The use of color in her work is about the beauty of variety. It is not without reason that a mixture of joyful and interesting people is referred to as colorful. The pink page in the book was what had grasped my attention, but the comparison made with the girl holding the same color pink in between her hands and a trace of the color left as a dot in between her eyes is what made me linger and look at it more carefully.

What are colours and where do they come from?

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born in 1642 in England and was amongst others a physicist and mathematician. He began exploring what colours were and where they came from in his twenties. With the help of a prism that he put in front of a ray of sunlight Newton could project a rainbow spectrum. To be certain that it was not the glas colouring the light he then added a 2^nd prism into the path of the spectrum to see wether the colours would change.

This led him to the understanding that light alone is responsible for colour. He discovered that colours are light of different wavelengths and that white light is a mix of all colours in the rainbow spectrum.

He also invented the colour wheel by taking the colours refracted from the prism and placed them in a circle based on the mathematical calculations of their wavelengths. This made the primary colours to be arranged opposite their complementary colours, for example yellow opposite violet. This made the complementary colours enchant the opposing colour through optical contrast.

The circular diagram became the model for many colour systems and his research was the beginning of what we know of light today.

My interpretation of the project was to get a better understanding of light and also therefore the lack of light. I wanted to have an experience only for me instead of doing a work that would tell something to others. So I decided to do an experiment where I would instead of using the light use the lack of light and try my living as a blind person for a day.

How I came to this conclusion is because of Isaac Newton and his thirst for knowledge. I could not stop thinking about how he had been in his room, doing experiments. If everyone would do that, what would happen then? What would I like to try, to find out?

When I decided this is what I want to do, I tried on a scarf to cover my eyes with, found a long enough stick to walk with and then when it was time I took the items and used them to partly disable- partly help me. My work ended up being me walking blind to school, sitting in the classroom on presentation day and just listening to everyone, taking pictures of everything with my camera and finding my way to the toilet, which was the hardest part. After class my friend Susanna led me to an empty room where she filmed me talking and also when I took my blindfold off. The film I will show you is the part when I take the blindfold off. It was a very hurtful experience for the first couple of minutes.

Hurtful in the way that you could not focus on anything other than yourself and the pain. At the same time you appreciate what you have so much more. To be in a state where you are robbed of something, of one of your senses, is an awakening as much as it is a new beginning. My day as a blind person was a day of anger, chock, surprises, frustration and appreciation.

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I think that my way of working with this project was very fruitful for me and also opened my eyes for a new way of thinking. I have realised that my works do not need to be telling for anyone else other than me. If they do it is just an bonus. I also liked the exploring of my emotions in regard to what I am doing and also try to just “be” in the state you put yourself in and to experience it fully. It can also be a product of importance.

The Silkscreen print I did was Blood red and it relates to my project in the sense that they

both were an act of me corresponding with myself mostly. The day we got the assignment of the Silkscreen print I decided I would do the colour of menstruation blood.

I really liked this assignment and the fact that we had a long time to work on it. The fact that we got to discuss our works also adds as talking is a just as important part as working, a lot of the time. If you are afraid to say something I think often it is because you are afraid that what you are doing is wrong. What you need to know is that nothing is wrong instead what you are doing is right, and that your friend that is doing the exact opposite of you is also right. When you speak up you get a chance to grow and see your work in a new light and maybe then the work can also better from it.

 

(born Hastings, Nebraska, 1934.) Painter, Textile/Fiber/Weaver, Artist.
 
 
At the Stedelijk Design exhibition my attention was quickly drawn to the textile area were a lot of gripping works was exhibited. Most of the items appeared very autonomous and were presented as art displayed in frames, on glass tables or hanging down from the ceiling. Probably the smallest section of pieces (size A4) made of colorful weaved threads caught my attention – they were made by the American artist Sheila Hicks.
It is hard to say what it actually was that dragged me into her small and actually very simply and straightforward made artworks. I had the feeling of looking at a continues (paintless) painting with numerous layers. I was sure that something interesting had to be hidden behind those threads and probably made by a person with a lot of experiences and an interesting background.
The Stedelijk has written an appealing text on the wall about textile as art and how the industrial movement has influenced the textile scene and how the old stereotype that textile work was women’s work has changed through the time.

Sheila’s woven textile pieces are attractive because I neither could categorize the style or the period. Something in them looked familiar but at the same time like something I had never seen before, I consider it like a hybrid of different cultures and nationalities, emphasizing the use of different materials. The way it was presented was also interesting, in small frames, side by side. Very organized and strict but the threads stood out very randomly in a way. I really wonder why Sheila Hicks made these small miniatures and to understand that my research is based on her biography and her history.

Sheila Hicks is educated in Fine Arts at Yale University. She started as a painter and turned her carrier into weaving and working with fibers – from 2 dimensional work to 3 dimensional work. Her miniatures (the ones in the Stedelijk) reflect her past as a painter as you can translate them to weaved paintings. These are works she has done through her whole career, besides that she is well known for her big weaved sculptural installations and wall decorations.

In her studytime one of her professors was Josef Albers, the Bauhaus master who had settled in The United States because of the pressure of the Nazis regime. Albers was the director of the Department of Design and transplanted some of Bauhaus ideals to Yale University that is reflected in a lot of Sheilas earlier work for instance the patterns, her choice of colors and the geometry and abstraction just like the classic impression of Bauhaus.

With Josef Albers [x], Sheila worked in a kind of color laboratory, and did extensive research on materials, plastics, paper, wire and plaster, that could also be one of the resons why she often weave different objects into her work. Since the 1960′s, Sheila trained in the modernistic Bauhaus tradition, as a unique way of mixing autonomous art with the traditional craft of weaving. In an interview she says: “However, when I was at Yale I had exposure to art history. I took ‘Art of Latin America,’ with Dr. George Kubler, and I chose to write about textiles because he had given a lecture showing beautiful old Peruvian mummy bundles.’’ Those textiles, she recounts, made a strong impression on her. She realized she needed to find out how they were made — not just how they looked. “At that point, Albers — Josef Albers — saw me struggling in my painting booth on improvised looms that were not looms; they were just painting stretchers that I used to tie yarns into tension, and he said he would take me home and introduce me to his wife.’’ His wife was Anni Albers [x], who is perhaps the most well-known textile artist from the 20th century. Anni Albers was a former bauhaus student and helped Sheila with a lot of work in the beginning of her carreer. I believe that her past as a painter and her influence from Anni Albers/ Bauhaus tradition could have caused Sheila Hicks  – through her whole carrier – to continually make these small, straight forward, minis/miniatures beside her other work (3 dimensional). Notwithstanding that, Hicks played an important role in the transformation of textile art during the 1960’s. Textile artists changed the dialogue and understanding of textiles as sculptural pieces in addition to two dimensional works.

The story tells that Sheila is always carrying a loom – and every time she has a moment she starts weaving. As written above I find a lot of her miniatures look very ethnic, and that is probably because she has traveled a lot through her live. In the late 50s Sheila went to Chile, Mexico, India and Morocco and worked with different Local Artist. There she was inspired [x] by their weaving techniques, color theory and architecture.

To understand and try to experiment myself (right image above). I found this old loom and tried to weave a miniature my self and totally understood why you can get addicted to weaving. In a way it is very meditative and when you first get a grip on it – it is very uncomplicated and just a pleasure to do.

I also found this book at the Library of the Stedelijk:

A book of Irma Boom called ”Weawing as a methopor” with her collection of her miniatures. The book displays over fifty of Sheilas woven textile pieces
Not that this research should be about Irma Boom, the maker of the book (graphic Design) But she need also a cadeau. The book is amazing beautiful, and present all Hicks miniatures in a very nice way. All the pieces are presented in a beautiful layout – a nice red line through the book (e.g.colours) so you almost feel like looking in someone’s sketch book. The Book stand out very personal. I can only recommend you to go to the library of Stedeljk and check it out and have a look in all the other books. A new book was recently published on her textile installation at the Mint Museum’s Atrium [x]

Sheila Hics miniature is a constantly sidework through her life. I would translate it to weaved diary paintings. It is impressing!!

Organic but still fixed, Simple but far from boring. Soft curved and sharp edges. The not expected material for this fragile form. Not as visible as it should be, standing low and unfortunately not visible from different sides. You would not place this object directly in the design section of the Stedelijk Museum but after research I could surely place it better in its context. After telling people which object I chose a lot of them didn’t remember the piece. A pity because it’s beautiful but also logical because of his hidden position. I couldn’t say directly why I was touched by this object but after some thinking I noticed it refers to my interest for curved forms, layers, shadows, inside and outside and the material clay.

When I started my research. I directly found out that Wouter Dam was a student at the Gerrit Rietveld from 1975 till 1980 what made me directly more motivated and interested for this research. Accompanied and guided by Jan van der Vaart, an influential ceramist for the Netherlands  famous for the new design of the famous tulip vase., Wouter Dam explored shape and volume which he would continue during his career. Unfortunately there is not much more written about this time in the Rietveld Academy. From 1985 onward he was able to make enough money to live from selling his work, allowing him to spend more time in perfecting his technique. His early work gives an impression what his later work will look like. After his first phase of still recognizable vases, the vases started more breaking the symmetry but still suggest a latent ability to contain. In phases of 5 years you see a clearly development, every step is logical coming out of the one before.

Wouter Dam concentrate at the space the works take over. He doesn’t decorate his objects but focus on the form of his ceramics. He begins his abstracts sculptures on the wheel, although you don’t see this in the first glance. First he makes 10 to 12 cylinders which he then cuts open and join together in another way. Sometimes it’s a technical challenge, to make sure that it is perfect but still an example of hand-crafted workmanship. It is hard to stay close to your original creative idea and produce it. Sometimes he put more time in making the correct supports to make it than the actual sculpture itself, but critical for good results. Another technical challenge is finding the perfect stage of hardness to assemble the sculpture from the clay rings.
The colors of his works are soft and sensual chosen to enhance the shape. The colors are slightly added in different layers to find the perfect suiting color for the form and do the most for the light and shade. In his previous periods he uses only one color for his forms but now he sometimes add a little bit of another color too but only support the already existing lines.

What was also interesting for me were the different connections and impressions people made after seeing his work. Some describe it as a forms inflated by air like a sail filled with wind who billow and swell. Others refer it to human forms, feminine forms, popped cocoons or wooden boats crashing in the waves. There isn’t a direct mention. He strives for a vague memory of a real thing, just a hint. There has to be enough room for the viewer to let his imagination run free. That is for me a good reason to explain why this object fits the design section of the Stedelijk Museum. I can see this object refer a vague memory of vases. Vases of his older work but also vases of other artists. Modern times give you more the opportunity to think bigger and extremer than round vases. By putting this object in the design section you give a hint of the period we live in.

His work is mainly bought by collectors and museums sold in private art galleries for all over the world and he is notable popular in Tokyo. I can’t wait for his next steps in progress they don’t look big but for me it is an interesting thing. So I hope to visit on of his galleries soon.

I had walked around the design exhibition of the New Stedelijk for about an hour, when, after rows and rows of Swedish cutleries, german engineering and dutch design homes, my eyes fell on a piece of pottery by an English artist. His name was Grayson Perry and the work was Strangely Familiar, a ceramic vase acquired by the museum in 2000, contrasting quite a bit from the otherwise dutiful and rather dull exhibition. The vase show blue human figures engaged in sadomasochistic sex over a background of British suburbia. A sentence is written upon it: ‘DADDY DON’T HIT ME, MUMMY STOP HIM...’

A few years back I studied archeology at the university of Stockholm, and for me the most inspiring part of the studies was antique art. The evolution of art in the early centuries of history, in Sumeria, Egypt and Greece is a favorite subject of mine. When I see the pottery of this contemporary artist I recall the faces of Achilles and Ajax, playing a game of dice on the black-figure pottery of 6^th century BC Greek painter and potter Exekias I saw at the Vatican Museums in Vatican City. Grayson Perry pays heed to this tradition and the images on Strangely Familiar remind me of the bacchanals, and is not far from the courting of young boys, often shown in both black- and red figure pottery painting. His splashing text, as recited above, also goes back to the way Greek painters wrote text on their pottery.

Perry discovered early on that he was of a masochistic nature and at the same time a transvestite, which reflects in a lot of his work. His earlier works where in film, but as the medium failed him he found it more interesting and effective to use ceramics, tapestry, metal-works and other applied art forms. Here the beauty and usefulness of the work hid the underlying layer, which sometimes would be sexual or violent, but always and more importantly a vehicle for criticism; comments on social injustices and hypocrisies. Here I find the explanation of why we find Grayson Perry, the artist, in the design exhibit of the Stedelijk. He is surely an artist, and a well-read one at that, but his works are in the field of applied arts. They are essentially meant to be used and useful, in the same way Greek artist made vases that were commissioned by the wealthy families.

Although this is an interesting distinction, that in fact places Strangely Familiar directly in my path, I don’t think that Perry’s vases will ever be used as such. I believe they are works of art in their own right, and the reason we find them alongside teapots, telephones, Bauhaus and De Stijl is a question of definition, and Perry’s choice to work in traditionally applied art forms.

At the same time it is argued that art and design has moved closer to each other in later years, and that they in some cases are indistinguishable. An artist can easily work as a designer, while a designer successfully creates or uses art in his projects. That this is a later development I realized in the halls of the design exhibit, where the visitor moves through rooms chronologically and thematically ordered to show works of great design. As the rooms become more contemporary, I feel there is a certain shift, from usefulness and immediately perceived function towards less obvious designs, that are more autonomous. It is in this last room I find Strangely Familiar.

I am drawn to it, at first by the likeness to a dear subject of mine, the Greek vases, but then I am intrigued by the subject matter of the vase itself. At this moment I haven’t heard of this artist, but the work speaks volumes about him. When I later read about him in the library, I learn of his life as a cross-dresser, artist and art historian. He has practically become a hold house-name in England, and apart from his own work, he writes books about art and curates shows for museums. In 2002, the Stedelijk held a solo exhibition for him, which in turn made him a Turner Prize-winner the year after. He accepted the prize while in his cross dressing-persona Claire.

Further reading and video:
"The Thomb of the Unknown Craftsman"; Grayson Perry in the British Museum until 26 February 2012

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/in-the-best-possible-taste-grayson-perry/4od

17 Rietveld's Foundation Year students visited the "Stedelijk Collection Higlights /Design" in the newly opened Stedelijk Museum. Marveling at some masterpieces of Interbellum design or surprised –a little further– by the Scandinavian design some of us know so well from our grandparents homes, we arrived at the last part of this "Depot Salon" wondering what a 2012 selection of Design could be.
Researching contemporary design we composed the "2012 Supplementary" which we present in this post. From the exhibit "Stedelijk Collection Higlights /Design" we all selected a personal best and made it the focus of the researches published as part of the project "Design-in-the-Stedelijk"

For three months, Rianne Petter and René Put (teacher at Graphic Design) collected posters hung throughout the city of Amsterdam, a total of 523 different posters. They carefully studied and deconstructed this collection according to their most important features, researched certain elements such as text, image, color and composition, isolated and then reconstructed them to create new images. Poster No.524 makes clear how a creative research process works, and is designed so that more generalized meanings about posters and visual culture are made visible. Jeroen Boomgaard and Jouke Kleerebezem’s texts both deepen and contextualize Petter and Put’s individualistic approach, while at the same time exploring the historical meaning of posters in public space (including a history of poster design since 1900) [x]

The book > Poster No. 524 < presents their researches, revealing how a creative process unfolds, how art operates in public spaces and how one goes about creating a visual identity.

Material related to the project will be on display at the Rietveld library from Monday Nov. 26th till Dec. 5th /2012. The project was developed at the Research Group Art and Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the book is published by Valiz. They pursued this research with the support of a grant from Fonds BKVB.

Sol LeWitt  „ Incomplete Open Cubes“:

In the 1960s, Sol LeWitt began to investigate the cube, one of the most basic geometric forms.

He started with the question: If you take an open cube and systematically subtract its parts, how many variations are possible? LeWitt identified a series of 122 unique open cubes with three edges (the minimum number needed to suggest three dimensions) to elven edges.

Guy Rombouts

Guy Rombouts (Geel, 1949) is een Belgisch beeldend kunstenaar.

Azart alfabet

-Slavs and Tatars

Slavs and Tatars was born in 2006, devoted to the polemics and intimacies between the east side of the Berlin wall  and the west side of the Great wall of China,  in easy words ‘’Eurasia’’. The  group explores time relations between  Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians, groups that belong those lands.

The beforehand mentioned collective has mainly language , architecture, politics, mystical stuff, etc… as the main focuses of their researches, practices and magazines,  but is possibly through the multiplicity of languages  around  Eurasia by which  Slavs and Tatars build connections between disparate subjects as new ideologies ,old histories and  some  places, is by this way that some cultural affinities and geographical identities arise from unexpected  places and  never minded sources . Its is by their great interest in language by which their work take place in the public space, trough institutions or media, to the public sphere.

Slavs and Tatars interest in Eurasia  because its relevant role politically, culturally and spiritually , It  position belonging two continents make  languages there played a big role in a practical, historical and sometimes  sacred way, (they point to some old  an recent mystical protests which are reflected in the changes of affinities and differences until nowadays).

Khhhhhhhhhh

In this edition  Slavs and Tatars seeks for  the changes of language ,across Eurasia ,from a close and personal  perspective, but at the same time understanding it  from a discreet distance. Their phrase  ’’ Times are changing , consequently the scales we use change ‘’ takes a real meaning with the idea of substitution which examines, rethink and self-discover  the role of mysticism in social revolutions, metaphysics of protest. It is under the name of ‘’ Khhhhhhh’’ by which they try to show these changes.

x, ? , ?  or  ? ,  all these belong  [Kh]”  but with almost different graphemes, sounds, roots and roles. We can considerer [kh] as a linguistic totem  who plays different iterations in different  languages across Eurasia, To begin I think is important to understand the phonetics of [kh], it begins in the  vocal tract , in a rasp over the throat ,is at this friction  where [kh] ends and other letters begin.

It is remarkable the role that [Kh] has in different languages, I can describe like an example the Persian word for house— (khaneh)— begins with [kh],  while other persian words also related to ‘’shelter/house ‘’  has the the [kh] like a beginning or beside it, okhraniat (to protect), kholia (care), khibarka (hovel) … khlev (cowshed [Kh] followed by [l], produces an entirely different meaning to a [kh] followed by [r]. Changing the [l] of the Russian  (khlam, junk), into an p [r: junk is sublimated and becomes (khram, shrine).

In some historical points languages get richer. New words brought by foreigners, neologisms forged by common parlance, among many others, It is at this point that [Kh] suffer certain transformations and get the acquisition of new multiple meanings. Certainly some ideas and stories from foreign lands bring new symbols, whose with the time becomes in letters , those  will have an  inherent correspondence between the sound—or shape—of itself (the letter )and its meaning, One example could be the eight letter of the Hebrew ”?” (chet), which in other languages becomes in almost  different symbols and letters, as examplesi can show:   Syriac «, Arabic ?  and Berber ?,  Greek Eta H, Latin H, Cyrillic ?, the remarkable part of this is that these letters are always regarding at some point to their real background, Hebrew ?  (chet),  like in the Hebrew these are positioned in the 8^th position of its respective  alphabet.

serpentine (click over serpentine)

At this last point I would like me to show 2 names of interesting importance in the changes of languages across Eurasia, especially in the early 20^th century, Velimir Khlebnikov  whose work connects cultural roots and linguistic ramifications, he did experiments with consonants ,nouns, and definitions spelled out in a simplest form, there  are some of its 1920s essays who mark a clear line  between what we considerer old readers and new, his work was classified as hermetic, incomprehensible:

The sun’s rays in the dark eye
of an ox
and on the wing of a blue fly,
like a wedding’s line dance
that streaked past above him.

And Rudolph Steiner, who searched  for a language of thought. He was looking for the process ‘’from the figure to the thought/ form ‘’, and how our bodies will be able to make a real union with one or another kind of being, something similar to this last statement could be turning the reading normal book into a manual and lately into an artist book, according to him it will lead to a ‘’high level of spiritual insight’’.

“Style, however, requires continuity of thought. Anyone setting out to write an essay and to write in style ought already to have his last sentence within the first. He should in fact pay even more attention to the last than to the first. And while he is writing his second sentence, he should have in mind the last but one. Only when he comes to the middle of his essay can he allow himself to concentrate on one sentence alone. If an author has a true feeling for style in prose, he will have the whole essay before him as he writes.”

Ed Ruscha is an artist who mainly works with text. His works have been assigned to pop art at the start of his career. As pop artists put common objects into images, such as, advertisements, magazine, cartoon, Ed Ruscha started his career by dealing with so called typical images and texts. Soon he began to focus on text.

For more information about a brief introduction about the artist (Click!)

When I faced his works for the first time, I thought that meaning of text must be influential on his works regardless the artist’s intention because text is tremendously powerful. At the same time, a question was raised about his approach to text. What is more, I also realized that some of Ed Ruscha’s works has a similarity with a Korean conceptual artist Yi-so Bahc’s one. So, this essay will explore some of Ed Ruscha’s methods to handle his subject by both investigating a couple of his paintings and comparing to Yi-so Bahc’s ones.
 
A change in dealing with subject
 
Ed Ruscha did not intend to convey messages but wanted for viewers to enjoy text itself as an image. To achieve his purpose, it was important for the artist to make viewers experience his point. In fact, his earlier works were relatively illustrative and expository. For instance, in ‘20th century fox’, relatively many imagery elements – such as the angle that the text was drawn or the horizontal thrust – were provided to explain what the artist would like to mention about the text directly.
 

Ed Ruscha, "Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights", 1962. Whitney Museum N.Y.

 
However, Ed Ruscha has kept trying to reveal a text itself in his paintings and minimize other unnecessary elements. He has eliminated illustrative elements from his paintings, and at some points, only a vague background and a text were remained.
 

Ed Ruscha, "Voice", oil on canvas 16 H x 20 W (inches) 1968

 
An artist who keeps silent
 
Ed Ruscha once said at an interview, “Words are pattern-like, and in their horizontality they answer my investigation into landscape. They’re almost not words – they are objects that become words.”As he commented, he sees words as objects. However, suggesting text as an object must be arduous. How can it be possible to force viewers not to read words but see them as an object though it is natural to read text? Although I doubted, the result is successful. Explaining with an example of my experience, when I looked at his paintings, I have completed viewing a painting by reading words on it and kept reading another words on the next painting.
By the way, even though I thought that I was reading text, there was a strange aspect that I could not remember the text I had ‘read’. I merely could remember an image which consisted of an uncertain background and text in the middle of the image as if I recall a painting. That is because the text in Ed Ruscha’s paintings keeps silent and did not convey any information like the text in newspapers. It can be clarified by comparing with Yi-so Bahc’s drawing as this reaction is the opposite of that of Yi-so Bahc’s case. Following is Yi-so Bahc’s drawing showing an installation for the phrase, ‘We are Happy’. Yi-so Bahc’s work encourages viewers have a question, “Are we really happy?” Furthermore, viewers remember they have seen a message rather than a drawing. In Yi-so Bahc’s case, the text conveys a message and does not exist as text itself. In other words, each drawing of each artist shows text in common, yet viewers’ reactions are clearly different.
 

Yi-so Bahc, "We are Happy", 21x30cm 2004

 
To achieve Ed Ruscha’s goal of enjoying text as an image, he took a position of being objective. That means, he strictly eliminated unnecessary or descriptive elements. Then the artist entrusted enjoyment of his works to viewers. There is another comparable example of works from the two artists which deals with stains in common. In Yi-so Bahc’s work, which titled as ‘A long story’, the artist dropped artificial tears on a spot of a paper one thousand times repeatedly, and an invisible stain remains on the paper. Tears usually implies something emotional reaction and encourages to imagine that an important event happened. Also, the title has a role that helps viewers to approach the artist’s thought. Yi-so Bahc utilised elements that he dealt with to emphasise his message, and consequently, the message in the work is strengthened by all of the elements.
On the contrary, in Ed Ruscha’s case, he collected various kinds of stains then made a book. He titled the book as ‘Stains’. The artist collected various images repeatedly and categorized them as stains. Every stain was treated as a mere stain itself, and no other explanation was given why the artist did that work. What is more, the title indicates repetitively the content of the book-stains. Ed Ruscha commented like following. “It’s nothing more than a training manual for people who want to know about things like that.” and “I think with Stains there was no latitude for any kind of manipulation of the image. In other words, the stains were exactly what they were stated to be. They were like little droplets in the middle of a piece of paper; there’s no gestural opportunity, no opportunity to do anything else besides simply dropping the liquid on the paper… I didn’t want it to look like art. I wanted it to look like a stain.”The artist merely introduced his work as ‘stains’, and viewers should explore what they are looking at themselves.
 

Ed Ruscha, "Stains", Portfolio of 75 mixed-media stains on paper, 1969

 
As the artist followed manners which is used in objective investigations, such as, a biologist gathers specimens, Ed Ruscha does not suggest his opinion directly, but exposes objects.
Ed Ruscha keeps this style through most of his works. The artist’s message is hidden or unclear, while his subjects reveal themselves as an object. This style sometimes can causes a trouble that viewers cannot acquire any clue to understand his work at all. However, it is obvious that his style is efficient and proper to implement his subject firmly. As mentioned in the beginning, I was curious about Ed Ruscha’s approach to text as I have dealt with text as a material and thought about how to develop it. So it was entertaining to know that his works are controlled not to be swept away by the meaning of the text as my work did not either. Furthermore, his works were supposed to be enjoyable for the artist as a sort of play experimenting with text and other elements. The Rietveld Library just aquired a beautifull book about Ruscha’s latest self curated exhibit in the KunstHaus-Bregenz. This book show his latest work and also all his famous books
 

*Works Cited from "Ed Ruscha" by Richard D. Marshall [Phaidon]. Recommended reading also: Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha

Letman. Behind this nickname hides a former student of the Rietveld Academy, Job Wouters.  He represents well a very illustrative part of graphic design and type design. This young artist is currently becoming quite famous, with some impressive institutions as clients like Monoprix, Heineken, Tommy Hilfiger, the New York Times Magazine, Playboy, or more recently a collaboration with dutch artist Dries Van Noten for a fashion show. In addition he has just published a book in collaboration with Gijs Frieling, and received the Dutch Design Award for his series of posters called Undercover.

Wouters first started to practice his drawing passion with friends and his brother, sharing their discoveries together. He still often collaborates with his brother Roel, or his childhood friend Yvo Sprey. He was quite intrigued by graffiti, practicing a lot and was particularly interested in street art lettering. This was his first step into the world of typography. In an interview, he said: when I was a youngster I was especially interested in graffiti-writers, who could write their names flawlessly in different styles. The communicative potential of type style was already of great interest to him. It is ironic to start looking at different styles that could communicate your personality through graffiti and finally do the same for corporate firms or advertisements. Later Job entered the KABK school of the Hague in the typography department and then carried his studies further at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where he graduated in 2004. His great passion for graffiti and handwriting was already very present during his studies. His graduation work was for example made out of 500 posters displaying each name of his classmates, they were handwritten thanks to a huge panel of graffiti styles. Job is definitely interested in underground handmade style of graphic design always keeping aesthetic problems, finalization and communication effects in mind. It is impressive to see a designer like Job who found his way so early, and then sticking to this fundamental base, staying true and evolving all the way.

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inspired by Rem Koolhaas’ Kunsthal Rotterdam (1990).

The Rotterdam Kunsthal is one of the very first of contemporary buildings that have tried to connect themselves in direct ways to their urban surroundings. By using geographical context it attempts to strive placelessness and lack of identity.

The first sketches of the Kunsthal show a changeable space called ‘robot’ which is flexible to all kinds of exhibition concepts with its shifting walls and tribunes. However the concept of adjusting develops further in the process and in his scale models he presents building blocks with two streets cutting straight through the construction.The Actualization: a square flat box located at the edge of the museum park. The building is divided into 4 pieces by an arterial road. It contains 3 exhibition spaces. 650m², 1000m² and 1250m², an auditorium, office and cafe.

Kunsthal

In the following drawings I researched this idea of architectural integration and urban fusion.

Gerrit Rietveld Academie / Hard Rock Cafe

Spui / Vondelpark

‘Patch Work Metropolis’ is a study for city expansion between Den Haag and Rotterdam in The Netherlands by Dutch architect Willem Jan Neutelings.
The initial drawing of the project contains a lot of colors which makes distinction between the places of different character in order to understand and figure out the geographical facts of the area. I was very inspired by the way of using colors and the way it looks, it reminds me of a coloring book.

My project is a book based on this idea. The image on the cover is based on that same drawing, and the content is a simple text describing the project. When you look inside of the book, you can only see white pages which have embossed lines with an instruction saying ‘Color inside of the lines’. By coloring, the text will appear.
 

(I did some research )?

After seeing wonderful sketches of the famous design for the Rijksmuseum by Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers’, I made a pop-up of the building as a form of a pop-up. click on the image to view the result!

In 1875 architect Petrus Josephus Hubertus Pierre Cuypers won the design-contest for the Rijksmuseum. Before this time he designed little more than a hundred churches, for witch about seventy got realized. Besides that me made designs for monasteries, chapels and did renovations of old churches.

Cuypers was the first Dutch architect who, in his time, used Gothic construction-techniques and put them into practice. Before he made use of the Gothic shapes in a decorative way, until he completely switched to a Neo-Gothic style.

The Gothic revival was a reaction on the cold and strict forms of the Classicism. This came from a nostalgic, romantic interest for the Middle Ages.

Cuypers’ design for the Rijksmuseum featured Renaissance-style arches, neo-Gothic windows and Medieval towers. The function of the building is not clear. From the outside you would not guess it is a museum. However, Cuypers build an ode to Dutch history by combining styles and thereby gives an public lesson in Dutch history.

The design got a lot of critique from the public, the Protestant majority could not cope with the ‘to Catholic’ result. They considered it also to be ‘to Medieval’.

I think it’s a remarkable building, build with a great eye for detail.

During my research I found out that the recent construction work, which started in 2003, is not only focused on modernizing the facilities but as well to bring long gone elements of Cuypers original design back into the building. Like for instance, in the front-hall they remade the mosaics on the floor. The Rijksmuseum hired a specialized Italian company to get the job done. The mosaics are series about the cycle of life, cycle of the year and the cycle of seasons. I’m looking forward to see the work in its final state.

Hans-Peter Feldmann (born 1941, Düsseldorf) is renowned for a distinctive use of photography and ready made objects in his work. At the end of the sixties Feldmann started to collect series of images from widespread visual culture as well as his own photographs. These series are displayed differently in printed matter as well as exhibitions.
From 1968 onwards Feldmann produced artist’s books, comprising a substantial part of his oeuvre and of major influence on the development of artist’s books as an independent medium.  In the first period Feldmann made Bilder Hefte, a series of tiny books at times containing only one image. Some books demonstrate a photo series of a single theme, like Die Toten, press photos of victims of political terrorism in Germany, and Alle Kleider einer Frau, a sequence of individually photographed objects. Other examples encompass disparate imagery without any enforced interpretation.
In 1995 Feldmann founded the magazine Ohio together with fellow photographers. This exhibition includes six issues of Ohio magazine that were made by Feldmann himself. Ohio magazine and Feldmann’s artist’s books greatly inspired younger generations of artists.

The exhibition is curated by Frank Mandersloot from his own collection supplemented with a loan from the private collection of the c/o Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf, and organized in close collaboration with the librarians. Feldmann’s work is displayed on exhibition tables specially designed by Mandersloot for this occasion. From the 12th May – 2nd June 2012 the exhibition ANOTHER EXHIBITION: artist’s books by Hans-Peter Feldmann takes place in the library of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, with about hundred books on display made by Feldmann between 1968 and 2012.

Approaching the work of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, in contrast with their extremely realistic digital photography reproduction and their vision of the meaning of representation, i begun to ask myself questions on what i could really perceive while facing their works and why. From this idea i ask myself who and how could really possess a neutral analytical capacity, free from cultural influences derived from social background and pattern of thoughts: the answer was children.

Children are ” pure “, meaning free from most external influences in their reasoning, like empty containers ready to be filled with knowledge and information, that can be then used freely in daily socio-cultural relations. From this concept i developed a personal socio-cultural analysis of the possible perception of art by these neutral observers.

I selected from the web four images from the two artists ( picture 1 ),

and then re-elaborated them with different media following my personal taste (that of a student with a analytic approach to the analysis of art work) or simply what’s the picture inspired me (picture 2).

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By wearing masks, I attempted to free myself from my ego and access a collective unconsciousness. It is a reaction to the Western urban human being, wallowing in a nostalgic concept of nature, convinced of being able to reach a certain pure natural state within the safe context of taking a course in “primal dancing” or “collaborating with dead ancestors.  quote by Emmeline de Mooij [x]

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The Basic year makes me think of a lot, I repeat A LOT, of garbage. Not only do we use trash -mostly found along the road whilst biking to the academy- to produce our most wonderful and ‘sometimes’ NOT so wonderful art works. We are also very skilled in re-transforming the artworks again into the state of what we originally found the loose particles that the artwork is consisting of; garbage. This re-transformation is especially noticeable after assessments, which takes place at the very end of every semester on the third floor of our academy. In case you are very interested in this spectacle of transformation? The next event will be due around the 13th of June, Feel free to participate!

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While being among great amounts of pre-/ post-garbage and garbage,  it struck my attention that it’s not only us, the Basic year students, who love to work with garbage. Also Pablo Londono Sarria, who graduated in 2011 in  his BA of Fashion at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, got inspired by- and used materials that he found in the trash for his graduation collection called ‘Pedes in Orbis’.

quoting Pablo himself:

”With ‘carrying’ as the backbone of my concept I developed the story of Pedes in orbis, which is Latin for ‘walking in circles’. This is a story of survival, the survival of seven young men in a distant future. They scavenge the surface of what once was the great western civilization. They are looking for useful scrap, treasures that will help them survive another day walking in circles in the infinite desert. That is what you do in deserts, but not all deserts are made out of sand. I designed the garments using the core elements of carrying such as rolling, tying, strapping, stretching and hanging. I returned to the origin of the backpack: a frame in which hang things. A rolled waistline with elastics secure the trousers, waistbands are made out of tied plastic bags and rope. Messy hand stitching and punched seams of wool I contrasted with the industrial finishing known from sportswear. A different use of contrast is found in the vivid color blocking. My color palette is based on a picture of a sand dune: the orange sand in shades of red turns into pink and purple when it mingles with the blue sky due to the wind. Outflanking the whole collection is the pelican, for it’s pouch is a natural Carrier. The animal and backpack are one, a frame is a container to carry. Trash becomes treasure. This is couture for men.”

Pablo is currently studying in London for his Master degree in fashion. Now, this makes me wonder; will Pablo continue working witch trash or was the use of it just because of the fact that he was under ‘Rietveld influence’ ?

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Just to get you out of this Rietveld Bubble for a moment; we are not the first and definitely not the only one who re-use garbage for whatever purpose. In the documentary Wasteland artist Vik Muniz is followed as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.

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Collecting garbage is relatively easy and common because of its great availability, in contrast with that lies the actual easiness of applying the garbage in to an artwork. I may conclude; ‘some apply it well and others NOT quite so‘.

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“What is art?” would be a long discussion subject. So there is no discussions about it, I claim my own hypothesis on this question -art is an experiment of telling your personal motion /thought /opinion via any form of communication . Let’s stick to the word experiment.

What is experiment? Wikipedia says An experiment is a methodical trial and error procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. I think  everything you are giving to show to other person becomes an experiment based decision because you can predict but you’ll never know for sure how she or he will respond . So every story/ movement/ your daily life processes when viewer involved becomes experiment/art  …if you ever had doubts who you are –my congratulations you are an artist!

Let’s go deep in to the first steps of this kind hypothesis ART creating , the part that is before the “showing out on public” experiment. Richard Niessen (graphic design artist) gave me some background to start from with answering “What is your opinion on experiments ?”

-“Well, it’s not that I like to do experimental work because I want to experiment. It’s just that I need to do these experiments to find solutions that do not yet exist. I always believed in work that is very outspoken, but I do not want to lean only on style. So the experiment comes from the search to make something appropriate for the subject, in a radical way. The experiments are always design-driven.”

and “Do you prepare yourself for experiments or sometimes they just happens during the working process ?”

-”Sometimes there is little experimentation necessary, sometimes it takes a very long time and a lot of try outs before I come to the right solution. And talking about experiments: there is always this element of risk, like in scientific experiments, you never know if it really is going to work. In the case of printed matter, I only know this when the poster or the book is in the street or in the store. I have the ‘feeling’ that it will work, that’s the hypothesis.”

So process of making art piece is experiment based cooperation of doing and thinking.

One day on my back way home from academy I stopped with this thought:

Usually materials I am using are like viewers -they act, sometimes predictable sometimes not and my decision is based on the particular stage of creating art /so i become viewer for my own experiment/art. In this moment you can increase your idea to keep it going where it goes or change the way it goes to keep your idea.

So I could use more speakable materials like people to find out flexibility of my thoughts and acts in unusually open way in usual environment .

I decided that the simplest moment of our everyday life where we see other people is road (way home or to your job or somewhere, whatever you go) . You “meet” people on the road and you seeing them act somehow/for example you think about them – that’s already an act ,especially if you make serious face during this thinking process ><. The idea is that people can choose reaction or make it up to tell more /show more not just keeping on automate their reactions. I mean If we are an artists…than we are not really good ones. This moment of 3 seconds ,when you look in to the stranger eyes walking by you is used uncreative, it doesn’t go farther than a smile or “hy” I mean that’s great(!), but how much does it says about your mood, day and personality? I do believe you can even start conversation from that , but that’s not colourful on the level of act/standard experiment .But if you have new language involved that was made up on the spot  that’s freedom of expression what allows  to play with this moment as much as you can…as artists in museums playing with their art pieces viewers. Making them wander/questioning/screaming “HELL YEAH” or “NO WAY” !

Playing around with/conclusion of  this hypothesis:

like I wrote before: I want to try change idea by starting acting and change the way I am acting to keep the idea .

first part: I was pretty tired this morning and i started from showing my mood of willpower to stay awake (“look broadly”)

It came out good-people were smiling .

second part: I changed my expression of mood after their reaction on my “look broadly” act.

Second part was more communicable, although people where running on their job  and I didn’t interact with anyone longer than few seconds . So I didn’t wait for something more than a smile ,on which I reacted with my expression of happiness.

i approved my own hypothesis with getting  light motion like after visiting a museum ….and exhibiting the same time as well . Bit sad that people didn’t go wild in their own expressions.By reations of some people i did saw that there is difference between museum and everyday life –it’s criterion of insanity.

But if art (as an experiment) process is the same like life process why should we behave in boarders “to look sane”? ……

p.s.  For me personally I have a feeling that people I met that experimental day will remember this day how they meet my art like a day when they should shown their own.

KEEP IT EXPERIMENTING !
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How much Rietveld is in anyone, who somehow came in contact with this school? I honestly doubt, that there is a real answer to this question. How much are artists influenced by their surrounding? By the people they meet every day? A lot!? At least they chose their professional field to react through their art on what is going on around them. But does a school situation really shape one more than everything that happens afterwards? One might be more open to other opinions of teachers and fellow students though. One might think more about: How much do we have to listen to others to develop? When do we change, when do we improve? Does an academy change us or are we changing the academy? Was the academy first there or the student?
Felix & Mumford think spatial in everything they do; may it be fashion, may it be sculpture. Does this make them artists in the tradition of the architect Gerrit Rietveld?
Trying to find a relation to the work of the Dutch artist couple Felix & Mumford and the Rietveld Academy, I can base this article only on my subjective perception of the educational artistic study programme and the cornerstones of the above mentioned. The duo consisting out of the Egyptian Gamal Eldin Fouad and the Dutch Claire Fons comment on what they see in the world, in the society around them. They seem to work from within, but as someone who walks around with open eyes. It appears, that it is especially the big cities- Berlin and Amsterdam, in which they live, which influence them. Cities in our times- that is where society happens. You can´t get closer to the people: truth and lies, misunderstandings and odd complications. It is an agglomeration of concept material. Felix & Mumford work critical and question conventions through the surprising use of well-known objects.

Day-to-day experience ripped out of context, put in a gallery so that the sudden space around it would make people aware of what they tend to oversee. So what about this big idea, that art could be for everyone, that everyone should be able to comprehend it or- at least- relate to it in some way or another? Most of their work uses an ironic twist to pose a question based on the “treasures” the duo finds- looking and reflecting on what they see.

In their choices, they might be too close to actual life, as that their art could be appreciated by non-art interested viewers. Nevertheless the artists play with the connotation of the Authentic and Honest. Their choice for materials shows a very “grounded” approach with objects and creative tools clearly recognizable from the “real world”, but manipulated (e.g. through a shift in context) to strengthen the artistic idea. The research and process part of a project are at least of equal importance as the final result, but don’t necessarily have to become a part of it in the exhibiting act. Fons and Fouad don’t create art for a purpose in the sense, that it would be a usable tool afterwards. The work functions as an attempt to understand and explain normalities and oddities likewise.
In dealing with their questions, they do not seem to mind classical art genre borders. Felix & Mumford use various media to express their thoughts often including text material. This fact – the department overlapping working-might refer strongest to their Academy background.

Their temporarily focus on language is probably due to Gamal Eldin Fouad, whose own work merely deals with text and who also taught creative writing at the Rietveld academy.
Felix and Mumford aim for a clear visual language, with their art always featuring only but a few different elements. However their work somehow gives the feeling of a certain separation into two parts. While one part strives for poetic subtlety (referring for example to the video, that can be seen in Fashion & Foam at the moment), the style of the other part often refers to urban art and is a somehow more decorative and literal translation. A good example for this would be one of their last projects, called Sub Rosa.

In this work they mapped the remaining graffiti tags around the Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin to draw attention to the city´s restoration and polishing in the curse of the on-going gentrification of the Center. At the end of their somewhat archaeological search stands a painting, which assembles the separate writings to one big memorial piece. One could say Felix & Mumford fit the Rietveld style in their subjects and their execution, how much this is due to an education they followed is albeit hard to detect in a time where the human mind processes so many impression and various information every day.

http://felixandmumford.com/news

Emmeline de Mooij’s • Mixed Media

Emmeline de Mooij (Delft, 1978), currently lives and works in New York and Amsterdam and has a very detailed collection of works. She works a lot with settings in photography and from what we see she often centers herself like an actor in her own works. From 1997 to 2002 she studied Fashion Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. If you see her work, you can see that she’s not your ordinary fashion alumni because her works are a combination of a lot of disciplines containing, but not limited to: sculptures, installations, photography, graphic design, video and performance art. I guess it’s safe to say her work is Mixed Media galore.

Where some alumni remain somewhat more linked to fashion, or at least to fashion within the ‘logical’ borders of fashion, I notice that there is an interesting thing that happens a lot during and after studying at the Rietveld. Something that I see less at other art schools seems to be more apparent there. The tendency to not-choose just one direction, but have a strong drive towards multi-disciplinary ways of creating their form of art. This is something that I not only see in the work of Emmeline de Mooij, but also in the work of other alumni like Felix & Mumford (Fashion, Installation, Graphic Design and more -),  Soepboer & Stooker (Fashion, Graphic Design and more -) and for example the way Thera Hillenaar doesn’t just make clothes for wearing, but also adds a focus on it’s interactive function.

The following images are taken from the solo exhibition ‘Strip it down baby, give me those bare necessities’ at the Steinsland/Berliner gallery in Stockholm.
What I have mentioned in the above, becomes clearly visible in these photographic images.

‘Strip it down baby, give me those bare necessities’

image copyright - Emmeline de Mooij

In the above work she spent weeks in European forests with her colleague Melanie Bonajo and together they researched and visualized how the modern man compares itself to the outdoors nature.

“By wearing masks, I attempted to free myself from my ego and access a collective unconsciousness. It is a reaction to the Western urban human being, wallowing in a nostalgic concept of nature, convinced of being able to reach a certain pure natural state within the safe context of taking a course in “primal dancing” or “collaborating” with dead ancestors.”

[welikeart.nl/]

I feel that from what I am learning now at the Rietveld, it is very important to try and focus on this collective unconsciousness, or somewhat try to approach and question the way you are thinking, and the way you approach a problem that you come across on your way to making a piece of art. This and the multidisciplinary approach to her works give me the feeling of a strong connection to the Rietveld.

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Kevin Power welcomed me in his studio, in a building that used to be a school. We sat down with a cup of coffee and I was soon to realize it was his birthday by a numerous of very nice birthday calls.

We talked about his career after he in 1999 graduated the fashion department at Rietveld, for example how difficult it can be to works as diverse as he does (paintings, collages, sculptures, illustrations, installations, costumes etc.) in a commercial context where they need a more clear style. That’s why he got two websites commercial oriented and one more diverse.

Kevin Power has worked as freelancer, made costumes and set designs for Klank Kleur Festival and from 2004-2010 he was hired by Tommy Hilfiger:” to inspire, everything from creating various interactive art projects to making props for stores and showrooms”.

The Atelier

The work space is a storage for previous works that partly will become future works. After being cannibalized to bits and pieces they are recreated and reused containing both the history of its previous function and new dimensions for the present context.

Works are gathered and hidden in corners, paintings put in an untouchable distance and space is cleared to give a fresh start and room to begin a new project, new thoughts and challenges.

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As part of the Foundation Years design-research project “New Energy in Design” based on the 2012 Boymans van Beuningen exhibit, Marie Ilse Bourlanges and Elena Khurtova were invited to present their work and research. As a sequel to an earlier presentation in the program 3 year ago [x], the development in their work over the years and the ambivalent state of design versus art presented the clear and inspiring ‘new energy’ in their work

E/merging patterns, challenges the Normativity of systems: a care for order, from which one can’t withhold (social, cellular or temporal system), and provides an access to an aesthetic of cancer, ‘beyond well and ill’.

The artists study the grouping of cells that emerge as a new system within a normal ‘baseline’ system. By applying the behavior of cancer cells (uncontrolled growth and invasion) as design parameters, Khurtova and Bourlanges offer an experience of the body that begins where the usefulness of healthy bodies ends.

The work consists of a series of 5 bone china cast objects, and depicts a flat garment pattern, in order to give a dry representation of the body. The flat surfaces are distorted with extruded patterns, relating to different organs or inner body systems. Those patterns are generated from detailed 3D mapping of tumor growth, by the use of algorithmic software implementing uncontrolled growth parameters. The obtained structures are manufactured by CNC milling machine, in order to produce mother-molds for plaster molding and precise slip-casting.

Realized at the EKWC, this project merges the material sensitivity of ceramics and the precision of CAD/CAM technology.

5 pieces – 28 x 62 cm – Bone China (ceramics)

2011

Come to the edge, he said
They said: We are afraid
Come to the edge, he said
They came
He pushed them…and they flew.

by Guillaume Apollinaire

Design; while going in a more and more functional direction, slowly losing its identity or personality, we can see globalisation in comparison with every object, especially from minimalistic or functionalist movements, there are no more locations, no more things which are related to places . In this case designers; who’ve been born with brick in his stomach. In other words one who lives all their life in the same place and were inspired by local traditions are starting to feeling more tension nowadays.
In the conception of slow design in the way how research has become a scientific experiment or philosophical theory the line between art and design become finer. On the exhibition which was dedicated to the theme New Energy / sustainability /Slow design one object was more related to the art then to the design , but the way of construction it is in the experience of the thing by itself that reflective ideal of positing thought has it’s basis. This statement is an almost perfect description of Panamarenkos notion of indention as creative method because for him inventive thinking must be invested in something, it must be realised in some way.
Thus when Panamarenko speaks of his machines as working, he is not simply talking about function -although this is enormous importance to him – but about the way in which a whole trajectory of new thought, aimed at an empty location of a certain kind? The journey into the unknown, the adventure, becomes embedded in or embodied by a thing. Even if this trajectory is never completed and flying machine, despite repeated attempts at improving the technology, fails to get off the ground, the concept together with the material engagement with the thing itself, will lend it an undeniable sense of purpose. It will make it intelligible, both as an object of technology and as an object of knowledge. Most important of all, it achieves an independent existence as what might best be described as a ‘radically styled’ work of art. It becomes inappropriate to categorize Panamarenko s works according to their appearance within some overarching notion of his development as an artist; we must look at them instead as a types and categories of things, aeroplanes or birds, insects or cars.
The impetus underlying Panamarenko s approach to work is a somewhat sceptical one, and his scepticism is directed at the institutions of both science and art. In this respect, it is part of an important and still current strand of scepticism in the complex weave which forms the history of ideas in the post-war period .
The most basic assumptions of science- it is institutionalised forms and routine methodologies- were being questioned by a generation intent upon pursuing their dreams rather than acquiescing in the face of a technology driven, steadily-intensifying cold war. In the field of art , this same spirit was manifested as a robot and to branch an attack upon the modernist conception of relationship based upon the idea that some profound sense art should demonstrate belief in a world, even a universe , that was potentially analysable, describable and measurable in its entirety.
His sceptical outlook extended to the nature of human existence .Rapid advances In the social sciences were leading individuals to question the biologically singular and rationalist construction of the human subject. For a brief historical moment it looked as though there were no certainties any more and seemed that everything was up for grabs .

As an example is an excerpt from an interview with an artist which reflects the position of Panamarenko about art and design:

If somebody asks me about my profession, I’m ashamed to have to reply: “I’m an artist.” For I consider most artists to be retarded. They always work in relation to the galleries and museums. This goes for all art, of course, art can only exist in relation to museums and galleries, but why should it depend completely on it? 50% should have a reason of its own as well. It should also have been made if the art world with all is crap wouldn’t exist. Most of the time one sees art which is 100% dependent. I absolutely dismiss all of it. My position is very neutral with regards to the general ideas about art. It’s easy. It relieves me of the question how to be anarchistic. It comes without saying, because otherwise I couldn’t make any good work. Without this dismissal my work wouldn’t be free and it wouldn’t contain any attempt of adventure. What a burden, all those stupid galleries and museums! One should analyse these people who have organized art shows for half of all the artists. One really wonders what artists are looking for in the neighbourhood of such jerks.

I have always been fascinated by different kinds of materials and combinations of them as there are thousands of different possibilities of the outcome. And especially in art or design works where you can feel that the material was completely ‘understood’ by it’s artist or designer. It was exactly that feeling that I got when I saw Tomas Gabdzil Libertiny’s Honeycomb Vessel #2 in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.

The Paper Vase or the Honeycomb Vases demonstrate a new way and approach of working with materials. This means that natural processes have to be understood and investigated from all different kind of perspectives. I like this thought and I think it is a crucial one for ‘sustainable’ design. We should communicate with our environment and understand it. Therefore it is important to take advantages of the things that are already there. The Honeycomb Vases symbolize this crucial understanding. In collaboration with beekeepers he found a way to make the bees build a vase like shape. The vases are created by placing a basic beeswax mould printed with a honeycomb pattern into a beehive. The bees then start to work with that pattern. It took 40,000 honey bees that worked over a course of one week to create one vessel! Libertiny himself calls this process ‘slow prototyping’. Every vessel has a unique form and they also vary in color and smell depending on the flowers that are in season.

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John Körmeling's "Hi Hi Ha Ha" (1992), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2006.

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Based on the idea of sustainability and especially the so called Slow Design I want to have a look at one of the works from  Eindhoven based design office EDHV, which were displayed in the Museum Boijman van Beuningen in Rotterdam. 

The work i want to talk about in this Essay is called „Time Writerz“, first exhibited at the Dutch Design Week 2010. It consists out of different plates of wood which have been hidden in the ground and sealed from air and erosion for more then six hundred years. By putting it back to the air the wood comes to life again. To show the ”growing” process there are pencils attached which are holding the wood and are „writing“, documenting  all the movement the wood is making.

EDHV is a creative office that was founded and based in Eindhoven in 2005 by Daan Melis who is a publisher and Remco van de Craats who take care of the design part. They are working in the field of product design, webdesign, motion design and architecture. As the title of the website already shows you „At EDHV, we don’t specialize in anything!“ and ” We can best be described as architects of identity. We work interdisciplinary so all aspects of identity can be fully integrated.“
One of many important things for EDHV is the sustainability of their work. Therefore the most important thing is to start every project with a proper research because this is important to create a sustainable concept or idea. To quote Remco van der Craats: ”A shape without a foundation has no meaning“. Another key to a good result for him is trust and intensive collaboration between his office and the client.

Remco van de Craats on design

I choose the artwork „Time Writerz“ because it fascinated me for different reasons. For me this work from Edhv is a lot about making change through time visible and here I see the strong connection to a collaboration work I did myself for an exhibition in Munich in an temporary space in the summer of 2011. 

We decided to use very basic geometrical shapes and also keep the choice of colors really simple. It also should remind you of the wooden blocks you were playing with as a kid and also was a direct reference to a old mural that was painted  on the ceiling of the exhibition space. The mural shows silhouettes of houses painted out of the basic geometrical forms and colors. These basic forms were made out of colored wax. Over the sculpture we placed a lamp. The wax was slowly melting down during the time of the exhibition by the heat of the lamp hanging over it. Our goal was to work with the space and also showing the fact that the space, which we were using was temporary, by letting the artwork vanish during the show.
 

Another Artist that works with the same idea of making change visible is Belgian born artist Francis Alÿs. Educated as an architecture in Tournai and Venice, he move to Mexico City in 1986 and soon started to work as visual artist.

Melting wax sculpture

He mostly works with video and performance art. His performance „Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing)“ done in 1996 in Mexico City is maybe the best example of how Alys worked with the topic of showing the change through time, by pushing a big squared formed ice block through the streets  of Mexico City.

Experiments with Truth: An encyclopedia of the modern art.

By experimenting in diversity within styles, themes and waves, we are able to see beyond the frame within several art movements.

This encyclopedia is build up out of several factors which are based on retrospectives of “modern art” (paintings, sculptures and architecture).

Different aspects of these movements are interesting throughout time. From the past till the present we are able to calculate at least 200 different waves/movements fixated within the modern and authentic art scale.

For instance:

Avant Garde – Impressionism – Neo Impressionism – Art-Nouveau – Symbolism – Post Impressionism – Jugendstill – Fauvism – Expressionism and so on

Faking of paintings is a quite interesting theory, and we have to be carefully by finding a truly result. A lot of works can be seen as an original, but this isn’t the actual case.

The famous faker: Elmyr de Hory (A Hungarian painter and art forger that claimed to be the one that sold over thousand works to support art galleries all over the world) is one of the persons that can be seen as a truly highlighted subject throughout the history!

In this book 200 paintings are not only the fixation point of art waves and movements, but also the experimenting point of view is important throughout the works of art, because the real question will always be: are they fake or are they real?

An amount of works are categorized in a chronological alphabet, nearly fully focused on paintings, sculptures and architecture from the modern time.

Theories are also involved in the book. From Fakers like Elmyr to a painter-movement like Der Blaue Reiter.

From 1860 till the year 2012 we are still busy with theories about artists and fixation on the main essences.

In the book there is also a formulation about important collections from the artist, also published several book titles, revealing name of the author, title and date, that are categorized within the movement. Also quotes written by an artists that was connected to the mentioned wave/movement. Some quotes are written by “Situationists” like: Guy Debord and Isidore Isou. Also different manifesto’s are mentioned from for instance: Hugo Ball (Dadaist) and Luigi Russolo (Futurist).

In short: Interesting views on the visualized and textual context of the art-world!

this post is part of he subjective library project "Unopened Book"
the book can be found at the Rietveld library : catalog no : 705.8-doc-11 IV

Impression of STRP 2011. This video reflects my personal experiences at STRP 2011, the 9th day, November 26th.
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STRP Festival [strp.nl] is one of the largest art & technology festivals in Europe where music, art and technology meet. The multidisciplinary program combines 360 degree experiences with adventure to appeal to a wide audience. You will find projects by young game designers alongside major works from established international artists, experimental live cinema, and successful pop artists and DJs. At STRP, interactive art, light art, robotics, concerts, theatrical and dance performances, experimental music, interviews, discussions, films, lectures, video art, animation and workshops co-exist dynamically.