FTN-blog

Born in Japan into the tradition of Jodo Shin Shu Buddhism (Buddhism of the pure land), Kazuo Katase moved to West Germany in the ’70s. His work combines elements of both European and Asian culture, particularly the sacred arts of Buddhism and Christianity. Katase filters these traditions through contemporary technology in order to express a meditative bridge between two different ways of encountering the world. The resulting mood is perhaps more philosophical than religious.

For his gallery-size installation entitled Nightwatch, 1990, the walls have been painted red, the lights turned off, and the windows covered with blue gel to block the red portion of the spectrum of natural light entering the gallery. At first the walls look black, but on closer inspection, they seem a kind of emptied-out red. One piece within the larger installation, The Battle of Nancy, includes a back-lit photographic negative of Delacroix’s painting by the same name, as well as a red aluminum globe with a circular opening the size of a second, smaller globe cut into its side. The globes are positioned next to each other, in the middle of the room, with the opening in the larger orb facing the smaller one. Both globes are painted the same red as the room and hence they are both also characterized by a chromatic absence. Minimalism has influenced Katase’s work but its emphasis on angular geometry is replaced by the spherical forms. This substitution, along with the Delacroix, helps to create in the viewer a sense of Katase’s work as a meditation on the relation between these various traditions.

The other red (black) work in the exhibition, entitled Nightwatch, consists of an enlarged black and white photographic detail of Rembrandt’s painting divided into two adjoining panels. The two panels are backed by a red glaze and hence again the work acquires a numinous quality.

Katase’s work is, in one sense, about an absence intended to elicit thought. Walking into the exhibition is a little like walking into an undisclosed room of the space-age Versailles at the end of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though the installation as a whole suggests a contextual integration of art, magic, and ritual; the exhibition of two works in another room, in which the light was not filtered nor the walls painted, historicizes the exhibition as art. This gives these elements or works (this distinction is left intentionally vague in Katase’s own remarks about his project) an uneasy but charged synecdochic relation to the ephemeral quality of the installation. Similarly, Katase’s pieces that use back-lit photographic negatives derive a certain amount of their charge from the fact that photographs can be reproduced ad infinitum, but the use of a negative instead of a print reintroduces an irreplaceable and unique origin.

www.ftn-books.com has 1 publication currently available on Katase

It is about 4 years ago that i bought at auction two smaller paintings by Richard Schur. One is in my study which i am daily looking at it. The other on our second floor.

Whenever i look at these paintings it strikes me that there is a perfect match of colors. Schur chose the colors in such a way that they blend and confront each other. I think the composition is far less important than the way the colors interact with each other. Great art to look at and still growing on me.

I have 2 Richard Schur publications now available at www.ftn-books.com

I have known Ap now for over 40 years and never have seen him as an accomplished and talented photographer. Ap was the man who made the exhibitions in the Gemeentemuseum and abroad possible . Arranging logistics and building with his team the many beautiful exhibitions at the Gemeentemuseum.

Next to the museum, within a distance of 200 meters of the main building by Berlage a small and unmistakenly typical ‘HAAGS’ coffeeshop can be found. The name ….” Koffiehuis ‘t STATENPLEIN #. This is the place where Ap takes his photographs. Locals that visit the koffietent are being photographed and because of the black and white photography it gives a highly authentic, even a classic feel.

The book itself is impressive in its simple design. Silver and blacks dominate the design. With 88 pages and from an edition of only 250 copies it is at a price of euro 12,50 an absolute steal and a must for the serious photography collector. Book is available at www.ftn-books.com ( sent and signed by Ap Gewald). For information and availability of the photographs please inquire at ftnbooksandart@gmail.com

René Korten paints his canvases in various directions with solid surfaces, in layers on top of each other and in transparent colours. Spontaneous, but flowing and energetic movements on -recently- a smooth MDF surface characterize his working process. The transparent layers of paint dominate and move with its fluid property to a new reality.

These landscape-like paintings balance between abstraction and figuration. The resulting spatial image is the result of a competition in his painting process, which Korten himself calls “Darwinism in the paint.” Korten thus proves the paint’s survival power.

A finished painting retains its vitality because of its potential to flow further into other forms or to take on new images. There is actually no beginning and no end. The image is soft in the atmosphere and at the same time powerful in composition. Because of the abstraction, René Korten leaves much room for freedom of ideas and interpretations. There are no dogmas in form or law; everything is open to all kinds of observations. His painting is a search for connection with the outside world.

www.ftn-books.com has the Diver’s Eye book by Korten ow available.

Iris Bouwmeester lives and works in Breda in the south of the Netherlands. She graduated from the sculpture department at the Sint Joost Academy of Art & Design and obtained a master’s degree at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. In recent years she has exhibited in artists’ initiatives, galeries, museums and at festivals in the Netherlands and abroad.
In addition to her individual work, she is collaborating with composer Dyane Donck on various multimedia installations under the name BouwmeesterDonck.

Natural processes like arising, growing, transforming, deforming and vanishing are recurring themes in the works of Bouwmeester. Therefor geological and evolutionary phenomena have her special interest: Landscape, how it was formed, its history and appearance. Plants, flowers and primitive (marine) life, how they are shaped by their environment and how they in turn influence these surroundings. The way species and environment interact as one organism. These are all sources of inspiration for her sculptures and drawings.

Bouwmeester: ‘I like to start up my creative process by playfully interacting with materials. I work both with natural materials, like for example clay, as well as with contemporary environmentally friendly chemical products such as acrylic resin. I also use materials like aluminum or foam. I love sculpting with as few tools as possible to keep tangible contact
with the work in progress. That is why, in general, I prefer materials that are light, flexible and easy to shape. The physical possibilities and limitations of the materials determine the shape and size of the sculptures that I make. I consider the handling of the material two-fold: on the one hand, I am gentle and docile and I let my actions be guided by the character and possibilities of the material. On the other hand, I do not want to settle for its well-known properties, so I force the material into new forms in an almost violent way, by breaking it, cutting it open or tearing it. All this resulting in objects that show cavities, holes and bulges, and play with shadow, light and color. They look light and coincidental, as if they can still take on a different shape, change position or perhaps disappear.‘

www.ftn-books.com has several titles on Bouwmeester now available.

Here is another artist who ia have followed since his exhibition in the early Eighties at the Haags Gemeenetemuseum ( catalogues are available at www.ftn-books.com).

When painting itself is the subject, as is the case with Piet Dieleman (1956, the Netherlands), a radical approach becomes essential. He has chosen to work with strict, self-imposed constraints: six colors in a fixed order. He himself describes them as ‘fantastic tools’ that enable him to find enough disruption to justify the image. It isn’t abstract art as we know it from the modernist tradition, which strove to strike a balance between form and color. This is a more radical, ruthless form of abstraction that is not an end but only a means.

Dieleman studied at the Rotterdam Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands and won the Van Bommel-van Dam prize in 1984. His work has been exhibited frequently in solo and group exhibitions, and is held in numerous important collections, such as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the Netherlands, M HKA in Belgium and Museo Reina Sofia in Spain.

One of the books on Dieleman published by HEDEN, is a very special artist book. Almost 2 inches thick and only 20 pages. A true artist t book.