FTN-blog

The artistic expression of Bernd Koberling is born out of the ongoing conversation he has with nature’s own world of ideas. The paintings are as extension of the Arctic vast expanses, but instead of depicting their landscapes, Koberling is capturing their essence in a flora of his own painterly associations. He says:  – ”I draw from nature but translate that which is seen and experienced into my own form language.” To this, an additional dimension is added by the recurring use of onomatopoetic titles, and by his main verse: color.

Koberling’s compositions capture the gazing eye, pulling it into a world of color and movement. Here, it will find basic elements in conflict with each other; a pastel landscape penetrated by a red awl, or a bright void penetrated by a strobe-like line extended over the image plane, color fields that in one moment rests in stillness, while in the other is twisting and turning, like a dazzling microcosm. Spending time in the wilderness is said to raise an understanding of how nature’s fundamental structure is both reflected and merged with the structure of the human essence; if this is true, then Koberling is depicting this relationship like no other.

Bernd Koberling has since the 60’s been exhibited at museums and art galleries worldwide. In 2006, he was awarded with the Fred Thieler Award for his oeuvre and his contribution to the development of German contemporary painting.

www.ftn-books.com has some interesting Koberling items available.

Because of the opening of Maarten Ploeg i remembered Peter Klashorst who both rose to fame in the early eighties. Klashorst a painter “pur sang” with a very large production of realistic paintings in which many a time beautiful women were the subject.

Klashorst was born in Santpoort and graduated cum laude from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in the early nineteen eighties. During this period a new art movement arose in Europe, “The New Wild Ones”. Klashorst became one of its leading personalities. In 1983 he received a prestigious Dutch Royal award (Koninklijke Subsidie voor de Vrije Schilderkunst) from Queen Beatrix.

Klashorst was one of the initiators of “After Nature”, an international art collective that aimed at reinventing painting and bringing art back to society and taking it out of the official highbrow art world. The collective “After Nature”, including co-founders Klashorst and the artists Roberto Cabot, George Dokoupil, Jurriaan van Hall,  Bart Domburg, Donker brothers and Ernst Voss, opposed the prevailing non-figurative style and was interested in just painting what they saw.

During this period Klashorst could often be found in New York’s East Village art scene where he showed his work in galleries at Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for instance the Daniel Newburg Gallery and the International With Monument Gallery. He hang out with Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring,  and Jeff Koons still at the beginning of their careers.

Tired and disillusioned with the whole commercial art world and all the time consuming networking in expensive restaurants, he started travelling to distant places without an art market or top galleries. Just as his heroes the poet Arthur Rimbaud and the painter Paul Gauguin he went to Africa full of romantic ideas, but of course the harsh reality of the African city life is no picnic. During this time he exhibited in the National Museum of Kenya and gave lectures and workshops to local artists and street kids, but was also arrested and imprisoned a few times for his uncompromising sculptures and paintings.

Since 2000 Klashorst lives and works in Thailand and Cambodia. And in different countries in Africa.

www.ftn-books.com has some classic Klashorst publications available and at the site of Peter Klashorst himself, paintings and drawings are sold directly to admirers https://peterklashorst.com/

Amsterdam based pharmacist-artist Oey Tjeng Sit (1917-1987) invited visitors of an art fair to throw paper balls toward tin cans, decided to set fire to cages filled with balls of newspapers, or to fill warehouses with the same second hand paper material. He liked to add bizar titles to his works such as ‘Bicycling against the wind one might forget the invention of the wheel’, ‘An artist who is fashionable is a victim of good taste’ or ‘The only thing I know is that I trust blindly a feeling that promises me secrets.’
Oey Tjeng Sit, whose name means Yellow Clear Solid was born in Purwokerto (Java) at the foot of the Klud Volcano, that erupted just at the time of Oey’s birth. Born in the Year of the Dragon he found himself released of the duty to take care of his parents; that is why – after visiting high school in Bandung – he traveled to the Netherlands in 1938 in order to study pharmacy. Twenty years later he opened Apotheek Oey (Oey Pharmacy) at the Prinsengracht opposite the Anne Frank House. He took away the pills and potions out of the window display and started a small art gallery there. One of his nicknames was a ‘Dragon Man with a Dada Passion’ who showed the art work of colleagues and friends which gave him another epitheton: ‘the nestor of Amsterdam window art’. Oey’s work as an autodidact is characterized by a wide artistic range of disciplines: after a period of surrealistic drawings and paintings he started making wood and linoleum cuts, collages, assemblages and editing books through his own editorial ‘The Finger Press’.
In his collages, often together with Chinese ink and brush, as well as in his installations he used frequently news papers, of which he wanted to extend their short life, tied as they are to daily actuality. The newspaper was a source for many questions for Oey ‘Can we measure the weight of printed news?’ and ‘What contains more wood than newspaper letters?’ ‘If there is an order, then is it a temporary one.’

Oeys oeuvre – light-hearted, playful with a subtle feeling for the hidden esthetic quality of daily life – can be a longlasting confirmation of these words.

www.ftn-books.com has several Oey Tjeng Sit publications available and added to its collection 2 works by Oey Tjeng Sit which are now for sale. Inquire at wilfriedvandenelshout@gmail.com

From the same source as the Andy Warhol inviataion cards from yesterda’s blog comes another highly collectable invitation. It is the 1989 invitation for the Kunsthalle Bern. This card means that i have all publications for this legendary exhibition now available. Poster, invitation and catalog are all available at www.ftn-books.com

Without a doubt….Andy Warhol is one of the most important artists ever. He dominated the art world for over 4 decades and even at this time his influence on artists is still there. Over the decades many exhibitions were held and because i was lucky to locate some important invitation cards, i now can offer these cards at www.ftn-books.com

Thomas Huber’s paintings transport us to an ordered, reconstructed world, which goes beyond the purely perceptible. His perspective portrayals of spaces and places in the mysterious game of light and shadow do not depict reality. The artist’s studio, living space, semi public lecture halls or exhibition rooms and view of the fantastic city of Huber Ville shows precise, constructed fictional spaces, deserted places which are occasionally animated by stylized human or animal figures.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Huber titles available

It must have been in the late Eighties when i met briefly with Walter Nikkels. Rudi Fuchs had just started his directorship at the Haags Gemeentemuseum and Nikkels was introduced to me. I had known his book designs from the catalogues he designed for the van Abbemuseum and at one time , before Gracia Lebbinks was starting her work for the Gemeentemuseum, NIkkels was asked what he could do for the Museum. Not much because at that time he had too much work, so Gracia Lebbink started her work for the Gemeentemuseum with the Kounellis catalogue ( available at www.ftn-books.com) with one exception at the introduction and opening of the Paleis Lange Voorhout Museum, Donald Judd designed the floors and Walter Nikkels designed two office desks that were in use for some 5 years. Over a period of 30 years now i have been collecting his book designs and i want to share the ones he made for the KONINKLIJKE SUBSIDIE VOOR VRIJE SCHILDERKUNST/ KONINKLIJK PALEIS AMSTERDAM. Book design, executed to perfection and now available at www.ftn-books.com