Mouth of the Sky, 2016
Overview at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Photo: Lotte Stekelenburg
Mouth of the Sky, 2016
Overview at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Photo: Lotte Stekelenburg
Mouth of the Sky, 2016
Overview at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Photo: Lotte Stekelenburg
Mouth of the Sky, 2016
Overview at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Photo: Lotte Stekelenburg
Mouth of the Sky, 2016
Overview at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Photo: Lotte Stekelenburg
Mouth of the Sky, 2015 - 2016
Mixed-media installation
Mouth of the Sky is an installation where the table takes on a central position. For someone who draws a lot, a table is an extension of the body. It is a place that is mainly viewed from a bird’s-eye view, an archaeological site where you can map out fragmented thoughts that drift to the surface. A table has multiple perspectives: if you work on it, it is a flat surface, if you take more distance than the object becomes spatial. This simultaneity of different perspectives formed the starting point for every work. Recurring topics are the act of drawing, cartography, reproducibility, and the multifaceted and changeable nature of identity.
The works in the installation are presented on a big floor drawing made in collaboration with architect Anne Dessing. The drawing is based on lines that were created by refolding a map. You could consider them as lines of a network that connect the works, or even as a map in itself. In this installation, I approach the object of the map as a membrane: a map stands in between the reader and the landscape. We can oversee the landscape, but not experience it. The maps in this installation are no longer serving their intended purpose: the scaling and the representation of a place.
Untitled (Map), 2007
Punctured, refolded map, 28.5 x 16.5 cm
One to One, 2015
Overview Van Gogh Museum
Green pencil on wall, 300 x 400 cm
One to One [detail], 2015
Green pencil on wall, 300 x 400 cm
The starting point for many works in the series was a map that was folded in a particular way. In 2007, I folded the map for the first time in this way. By folding the map, I wanted to connect places that in the physical world would never come together. The two-dimensional map that usually represents a three-dimensional space had now become three-dimensional itself.
Another version of this work titled One to One was shown at the Van Gogh Museum. With One to One, I wanted to map the drawing process. It was a large mural of 3 by 4 meters, in which I drew a schematic floorplan, based on the refolded map. I drew a pattern referring to the elevation lines on topographic maps, over a period of two weeks. I made a rule for myself: when the two weeks were finished, I had to stop working. In this way, I wanted to make a map that does not represent a place but rather the time spent at a place. Time determined the composition of the work.
Untitled (Desk), 2015
Various works on paper, wood, steel, 105 x 155 x 20 cm.
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Two Woven Thoughts, 2015
Pencil on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm.
Egg, 2015
Gouache on plaster, 4.5 x 4.5 x 4.5 cm
Graveyard Spiral, 2015
Coloured pencil and pencil on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm.
Phenakistoscope disc of a snake
Photo: National Media Museum/Science
& Society Picture Library
Gobelin Tule, 2015
Coloured pencil and pencil on paper, 30.5 x 21 cm
Mixing Colours, 2015
Gouache on paper 42 x 29.7 cm
Untitled (Perspective Study), 2015
Digital print from exposed photographic paper negative
on paper, 24 x 17.5 cm, edition of 3.
Prism (Pseudonyms) I, 2014
Image transfer on wall
Prism (Pseudonyms) II, 2015
Silk-screen on paper, 40 x 27 cm
Prism (Pseudonyms) III, 2015
Image transfer on paper, 40 x 27 cm
Prism (Pseudonyms) IV, 2016
Image transfer on plaster, 40 x 27 cm
Prism (Pseudonyms) V, 2016
Image transfer on plaster, 40 x 27 cm
Prism (Pseudonyms) is a series of photo transfers of the same image. Each time I show the work I repeat the transfer. As a result the image is transformed, disappearing slowly, because with this technique, imperfections in the surface leave holes in the image.
Not Agamemnon [front], 2015
Pressed paper pulp, steel, 165 x 60 x 45 cm.
Not Agamemnon [back], 2015
Pressed paper pulp, steel, 165 x 60 x 45 cm.
This mask represents a whole series of falsehoods. I was looking for a picture of a mask of a sun god, and without doing further research into the background of the picture I stumbled on, I assumed that I had found the mask I needed. I wanted to bring together a phenakistoscope and the mask in one image. After I finished my first version of the work my brother, who had just completed his exams in Greek, happened to drop by. He pointed out to me that it was not the image of a sun god that I had found, but what is called the death mask of Agamemnon, the Greek king who led the attack on Troy and succeeded in capturing the city through a plan made by Odysseus. The mask was discovered in 1876 by the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. He was firmly convinced that he had discovered the mask of Agamemnon, and that it proved that the accounts in Homer had actually taken place. Eventually it was proven that the graves where the mask had been found were 300 years older than the Trojan war. An artefact only seems to be able to withstand history by pretending to be something other than what it is, or, on the other hand, by disappearing, like objects which are found in tombs or under water.
Lacerate (F.L.T.R.: Navigating Through Double Landscapes/Desert/Kamal/Sand Painting in a Kiva Depicting Four Lightning-bolt Serpents), 2016
Montage, pencil, risograph, offset on paper mounted on coloured MDF,
83 x 59 cm.
Still of One to One, 2015
Cyanotype on paper, wood, steel, 174 x 110 x 77 cm.
Still of One to One [detail], 2015
Cyanotype on paper, wood, steel, 174 x 110 x 77 cm.
A cyanotype print can fade, but it has the unique property of regaining its original colour if left in the dark for a time. Cyanotype is a photographic process, often used to reproduce drawings without the use of a camera, which after developing produces a cyan/-blue image; hence its other name, a blueprint.
Perspective Study (Colour Negative), 2015
Photographic paper negative, 24 x 17.5 cm
Perspective Study, 2015
Digital print from exposed photographic paper negative on paper, 24 x 17.5 cm.
Perspective Study, 2015
Digital print from exposed photographic paper negative on paper, 24 x 17.5 cm.
Perspective Study, 2015
Digital print from exposed photographic paper negative on paper, 24 x 17.5 cm.
Perspective Study, 2015
Digital print from exposed photographic paper negative on paper, 24 x 17.5 cm.
Perspective Study, 2015
Making of Perspective Study, 2015
Pinhole camera with 10 apertures, 2015
The folded map Untitled (Map) gave me the idea of making a camera with multiple lenses. I quickly arrived at the simplest of all cameras, the pinhole camera. I made one with ten apertures. This image is the first good exposure of the window of my studio at the Rijksakademie. The object photographed was duplicated ten times by this camera. Now you can experience one object in ten different places at one time, by looking at this photograph.
For quite a while I didn’t know what I wanted to photograph with the new pinhole camera with ten apertures. Finally I bought a stuffed, mounted cobra and photographed it. A living snake sheds its skin at regular intervals, and thus can see itself from a different perspective. See also the documentation.
Eht Htuom Fo Eht Yks, 2015
Unprinted etching plate, wood, steel, Brasso, 13.5 x 66 x 86 cm.
Coat Stand, 2015
Acrylic on steel, wood, 172 x 50 x 53 cm.
A coat stand is closely connected with the passage of time. You hang your jacket on it, fill the time with various activities, and then come back for your jacket. It is an object that represents a timeline. This coat stand is made from the steel frame of a table. The colours are based on the work Prism (Pseudonyms), in which a hand is lit with three different coloured lamps. New colours are created by the refraction of the light.
Garland, 2015
Silk-screen and gouache on paper, steel, magnets, 100 x 140 cm.
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Garland [front], 2015
Silk-screen and gouache on paper, steel, magnets, 100 x 140 cm.
Garland [back], 2015
Silk-screen and gouache on paper, steel, magnets, 100 x 140 cm.
Office Chair, 2015
Office chair, steel, wood, 100 x 100 x 100 cm.
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
The Bárány chair, named for the Hungarian physicist Bárány Róbert, is a chair that is used during pilot training. I have adapted my old office chair so that it can be used as a Bárány chair. During their training, student pilots are spun round in this chair. When blindfolded, you no longer feel the rotation after several minutes, but instead think that you are moving forward. If you place your head on the rail and the chair is stopped abruptly, your body will uncontrollably move backwards with a jolt, and your arms will dart out into space.