Michael Raedecker records the memories held within spaces and objects in his enigmatic and dream-like paintings. Suburban homes, tree houses and empty rooms and vacant chairs, all float in haunting isolation. Muted hues are penetrated with thread and needle where the artist hand-sews forms into textural materiality. Raedecker mines art history and popular culture, sourcing compositions from 17th-century garland paintings, obscure magazines, and film stills.
this filmed portrait on Raedecker is by Franz Weisz
Since the beginning of his career as a painter Raedecker has incorporated embroidery into his works as a visual counterpoint to his washed-out paint application. His elaborate needlework adds linear definition to representational forms and the thread and paint visually mix together in areas of dense detail or abstraction. The absence or suggested loss of human presence invites the viewer to contemplate architecture as a mental or emotional space, where the domestic realm is detached from practical implications, yet deeply personal. Images of flowers, food and textiles with darkly ambiguous titles bring the domestic associations of his stitching into play with his subject matter, and show his interest in the Dutch tradition of still-life and Vanitas paintings. Raedecker’s distinct formal language explores the relationship between the formless, complex nature of our emotions and the vessels we use to contain them.
These are all examples from an excellent publication i recently aquired. Every poster is so unbelievable powerful and shows that the art of the poster is still very much alive. The SPEAK UP! pblicationis now available at www.ftn-books.com.
Sorry…..no this is not an Istagram post by a chinese influencer , but the portrait is of Han Yujuan.
韩娅娟
As part of the post-1978 generation, Han Yajuan (born 1980) is concerned with China’s socio-cultural transformations and new materialistic trends. Her works mostly employ a cartoon style based on Japanese anime, and explore the multi-dimensions of women’s lives.
Han Yajuan was born in Qingdao in 1980. She obtained the Bachelor of Fine Art at Oil Painting Department of China Academy of Art, and master’s degree at Central Academy of Fine Arts. She has lectured in the School of Media and Animation of China Academy of Art, and attended short-term study in Royal College of Art in Britain. Now she lives and works in Beijing and Hong Kong. She has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including: China, USA, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Italy, Australia, Spain and Turkey. Her works have also participated in over a hundred national and international group exhibitions, including: “Story about the Orient-Art Invitational Exhibition of Asian Youth” in National Art Museum of China; “Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture” at Australia National Portrait Gallery and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation; “Future Pass” toured in Palazzo Mangilli Valmanara in Venice, Rotterdam Wereldmuseum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Today Art Museum in Beijing. Han Yajuan’s work primarily deals with issues of female identity and self-awareness, she was ranked 7th in Reuters’ “The Hot-Young-Artists League Table”, and can be counted amongst some of the worlds’ most prestigious private and institutional art collections, such as The Uli Sigg Collection, CAA, and M+Museum.
www.ftn-books.com has the scarce Yujuan catalogue from her exhibition at Kerseboom Modern art now available.
First there was this catalogue that struck me. It was the Thieme Art published catalogue from 2008 to commemorate the winning of the Thieme Art price by Sargsyan. The title is THE TOUCHING and the art shown in this publication is totally original, Fragil paper and aluminium sculpturen build with this layers of material into moving figures. Their actions seems to be frozen to be captured by the artist. This is not the kind of art you would present in your living room, but fill a museum with these figures and you will be amazed with every corner you turn and encounter a new composition of almost true life action figures.
Karen Sargsyan’s sculptural installations are made of paper aluminium and refer to the materials’ importance in the history of international communication. His sculptures personally materialize history, characters, events, and nature through this simple material.
It has been a long time hobby of mine to collect and take with me the announcements for the planned exhibitions at the museums I visit. In the past 25 years, I have collected some of the most wanted announcements. Among them Basquiat, Erwin Olaf and Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. What makes these folders stand out is that in many cases their design is done by the designer who is also responsible for the exhibition catalogue. It is if you are looking at a miniature version of the exhibition catalogue. www.ftn-books.com has some of the mentioned exhibition folders at this moment available.
Readers of this blog know of my admiration for Gerard Verdijk and did not hesitate a single secoond when in 2011 a very large painting by Verdijk was put up for auction and did not receive its first bid. It appeared to be the winning bid and since the moment this painting entered our home it has been on display in our living room. The painting was part of the Peter Stuyvesant collection but a decade ago the staff of the Turmac Tobacco company and the founders of the Stuyvesant foundation decided to sell their collection. This collection is very well documented and from its earliest of beginnings the best dutch designers made the catalogues which documented their additions. I knew almost for certain that our paintings was in one of these publications but i never found the right one, but…..i now have it and i am very pleased that our painting is prominently present in a beautiful large catalogue, designed by Anton Beeke …and the title of it is “GROOT” in de collectie Peter Stuyvesant.
Published in 1997, the new additions were curated by the former director of the Stedelijk Museum, Wim Beeren.( see photo above this blog) An interesting final addition which almost completes all Peter Stuyvesant publications. This one is not for sale but there are others which are available at www.ftn-books.com.
It was a long time on my wish list and ia finally could fullfill this wish. Since i met Floor van Keulen at the Haags Gemeentemuseum where he painted the “Project room” at the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1989.
His wall drawings are extremely large narratives. You can discover human figuren, weapons, books and landscapes all within the same wall painting/drawing. Connected with eachother by more figures and objects, resulting in an almost abstract painting, but with so many details that are realistic. His stand alone paintings are scarce. Most of the time lare/extremely large and where his small drawings are just sketches and exercises for the large wall drawings. His paintings on paper are true paintings. Where his wall drawings are most of the time removed or painted over. His large “paintings” are permanent and one of these , from 1987 , i now have added to the FTN art collection.
The following text was found on the Piet Heen eek site and shows a different approach to his art.
Human figures and cartoons are the only motifs in the repertoire of drawings created by Floor van Keulen since 1980. They appear to be randomly spread across the surface, components of a well-balanced composition without any specific meaning. Shapes effortlessly melt into one another, debate with each other; emotions occasionally flare up, only to harmoniously merge together afterwards.
Floor van Keulen appears to shirk from the formal experiment, the abstract art experiment, in which realistic and figurative art that set the tone for hundreds of years is brushed aside as a truly relevant form. Van Keulen does not allow himself to be drawn into movements or trends within contemporary art. He has developed his own unique vision and confrontational visual language in which figurative depictions are interwoven with abstract shapes.
His art originates in his imagination and reality. He uses the ‘vocabulary’ he has put together through the years to formulate a vision of the world around him. The viewer encounters the virtuosity of the image and gets carried away in the painter’s exuberant gesture. On closer analysis of what it is exactly that affects the viewer so strongly, he or she first focuses on the pattern and motifs, attempting to decipher the artist’s story by interpreting the figurative elements. Only later does he or she discover that it is the work as a whole that is key here, the total emotion, not the details, form and contra-form. At first glance, the work appears to be expressive, but on closer inspection, clearly has a more subdued character and is carefully balanced and considered.
In 2004 the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag received a donation from Gerard Petrus Fieret, containing over 1000 photographs, drawings and other collectable items. This gift grew the collected Fieret works in the collection of the museum considerably making it the largest Fieret collection in the world. To remember the donation and to please the artist the artist was invited to make a live exhibition in which he made his drawings in one of the rooms of the museum and decorated the walls with these drawing. If i remember well , Fieret entered the museum for some five weeks, greeting the doorman in a very grumpy way ( yes he was a grumpy old man at that time~), walked the museum hall , entered the designated room and started to draw. Drawing after drawing came out of hands and the publicity department decided to use the event to anounce an exhibition of this huge gift by the artist. They selected 81 drawings from the already considerable pile of drawings and bundled these into a specially made poster and send these out to the press ( all in house made) to announce the Fieret exhibition. Only a few dozen of these press kits were made, making this one of the most desirable and collectable Fieret items. The press kit is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com
I understand completely that artist draw inspiration from other artists their works, but in the case of this “Fait d’hiver ” it is far too much a copy than an original work by Koons. I know of the spectacular Banality series sculpture from the Stedelijk Museum and i think it was a rightful choice to acquire this for a large sum., but i did not know the sculpture from the Centre Pompidou and its history. Here is the storuy which i found on “art-critique”
A Paris court of appeals has upheld a 2018 ruling regarding a 2015 copyright infringement lawsuit brought on by photographer Franck Davidovici. With the Tuesday decision, the Centre Pompidou and artist Jeff Koons have been found guilty of copyright infringement and now jointly owe Davidovici €190,000 (£163,900).
The lawsuit hinges on a 1988 sculpture by Koons called Fait d’hiver depicts the bust of a woman lying on the ground as a pig, wearing a flowered collar with a barrel, and two penguins look on. The amusing sculpture was part of “Banality,” a series by Koons that debuted in 1988. The series raised eyebrows at the time but many of its works would go on to be featured in a 2014 retrospective of Koons’ works that kicked off at the Whitney in New York before traveling to the Centre Pompidou and then the Guggenheim Bilbao.
“Fait d’Hiver” by US artist Jeff Koons at Christie’s auction house is seen before going on sale for an estimated 4-6 million USD in New York 12 November 2007. Christie’s will hold its bi-annual Post War and Contemporary Art Sale 13 November. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNAND
Meant to be commentary on the imagery of mass media, Fait d’hiver became the centre of the dispute after Davidovici saw Koons’ sculpture in a catalogue for the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition of the 2014 retrospective. The issue was that Davidovici found the sculpture to be incredibly similar to a photograph taken and published by the photographer in 1985.
Davidovici’s black and white photograph was created for the French brand Naf Naf and included a woman, wearing a jacket with fur accents, lying on the ground. A pig, wearing a collar with a barrel gazes at the woman with the words “FAIT D’HIVER” in the top left corner of the two-page spread.
“Fait d’hiver” (1985) by Franck Davidovici for Naf Naf.
While Koons made a few alterations, like the addition of two penguins and swapping the fur jacket for a mesh top, the sculpture does seem to mimic the photo taken by Davidovici just a few years earlier.
Davidovici first sued Koons and the Parisian museum in 2015 and in 2018, a judge ruled that the artist and museum violated copyright laws and owed Davidovici €135,000. However, the artist and museum appealed the ruling which has now been upheld and their monetary penalty was increased by €55,000. Additionally, if the museum or Koons continue to exhibit Fait d’hiver online, they will be fined €600 per day. Meanwhile, the publishers of the 2014 catalogue that accompanied the retrospective now owes Davidovici €14,000 as well.
In 2007, an artist’s proof of Koons’ Fait d’hiver sold at Christie’s for just under $4.3 million (£3 million).
Koons is no stranger for being taken to court for plagiarism. In 2019, a Paris court upheld a 2017 ruling that found the artist, and again the Centre Pompidou, guilty of copyright infringement. That case concerned Koons’ sculpture from the same series called Naked and a photograph titled Enfants by French photographer Jean-François Bauret. While the sculpture was not shown in the 2014 retrospective, images of it were used to advertise the show. The artist and museum were ordered to pay €20,000 to Bauret’s family. Koons also paid the family an addition €4,000 for use of the image.
Blog readers know of the large collection i have for sale on the Stedelijk Museum, its artists and its exhibitions ( www.ftn-books.com), but it is hard to grow this collection . No book markets, no museum visits and the only thing i could do is to photograph and describe my stock and add this to my inventory. It has now grown over by 1100 entries and i am convinced it is one of the largest collections for sale on the Stedelijk Museum and itss history. But to bridge the time between closure and reopening its collections to visitors, they made available some interesting virtual visits to the museum and its collections. Guided by curators and director Rein Wolfs , you can now make a virtual visit. One of the best i think is the one Rein Wolfs hosts. It shows the direction into which the Stedelijk is developing for the next decade or so. Interesting…. yes…., but i do hope they still will keep their focus on their history and great collection, they build over the years.
Artist/ Author: Oliver Boberg
Title : Memorial
Publisher: Oliver Boberg
Measurements: Frame measures 51 x 42 cm. original C print is 35 x 25 cm.
Condition: mint
signed by Oliver Boberg in pen and numbered 14/20 from an edition of 20
