Tag: art

This book is about the little things that interest or amuse me. It looks at amongst other things gated communities, naval history, failure, contemporary business practice and trees. It is an attempt to explore, through drawing, the complexities of meaning that cloud and confuse even the smallest and simplest of things. It is also an attempt to present the world as I see it. An idiosyncratic world where observed physical realities mix with language, thought and humour. A world that is strange, tragic and infinitely complex and where beauty and humour lurk in unexpected places. A world in which weathermen plan to lure tiny Herons down to guard and enjoy tiny spoon ponds and where Hugh Grant and I sit together drawing animals, but not speaking – Richard Dinnis

Thge artist book A POSTCARD FROM THE MOUNTAIN….. is available at www.ftn-books.com

the following text is published by DE PONT on the occasion of the Meertens SUBLACUS 3exhibition. The catalog is now available at www.ftn-books.com.

‘Listen, O my son (…) and incline the ear of thy heart,’ begins the prologue to The Rule of St. Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia (480-547) and used by monasteries to this day. These words are greatly cherished by Meertens. In his manner of painting, by dismissing any preconceived image and by responding to what occurs during the painterly process, he wishes to put into practice this appeal to listen. Sublacus is the term by which he sums up that approach. Consisting of the Latin words sub (under) and lacus (lake), it refers to the site at which Benedict found solitude as a hermit. Seeking the most profound point, the abbot chose a cave at the lower end of the lake as a place for contemplation and introspection. As Meertens sees it, the studio can also be regarded as the Sublacus, as the place where an artist tries to cast aside all certainty and does what the painting-in-the-making demands of him. Painting thus becomes a form of focus, involvement and surrender.

The paintings of Meertens have taken shape layer by layer. They are abstract, lyrical fields of color which occasionally have connotations of landscape. Sometimes the works are dark and stirring, other times peaceful and light, often hushed and withdrawn. Only after prolonged observation do they reveal themselves. That’s when we notice the marks left by instruments used to apply the paint, but also those made by scraping and wiping paint away. There are deliberate changes, but also unanticipated effects. On looking closely we see a sparkle in the specks of color and are struck by the way in which colors blend with each other or, by contrast, maintain their distinct qualities. Here and there, scratches made by the palette knife come into view as ‘scars’ that show the vulnerability of the painting’s ‘skin’. And throughout all of this, the transparency of layers remains as they come to an understanding with each other, as it were, and become part of an underlying structure.

Contrary to the wrought quality of the paintings, there is an almost ‘casual’ sense in the drawings produced as series. They seem to have come about naturally, like the humming of a spontaneous melody. The patterns are extremely simple and follow the impulse of a moment. Here painting is reduced to a straightforward act. Yet this simplicity and directness, so characteristic of the works on paper, have not failed to affect the paintings. In the most recent ones, we can discern a development toward greater clarity and precision, in which the number of steps has been reduced to a minimum.

Throughout his quest for images that tell about an inner experience, Meertens has gradually come closer to painting itself. References to visible reality have disappeared entirely. Instead, the paintings convey the story of their own development, and they reveal their nature in the colors and actions through which they have taken shape. The approach to the image has, in fact, become the image itself.

The world is big, the universe infinite, the earth crowded with tiny people. We are all living in our own little universe. With our own experiences, our own thoughts and feelings. We all look at the world from a different point of view. No perception is equal. No experience is the same. We might look at the same, but we all see different things. That is our Private Universe.

This how the virtual exhibition of his PRIVATE UNIVERSE exhibition starts at his home page.

For the catalogue please visit www.ftn-books.com and to visit the exhibition click the link.

https://www.koaarts.com/

the last forgotten Piet Dirkx cigar box

Stefan Szczesny (born on the 9th of April 1951 in Munich) is an European and international painter, draughtsman and sculptor. After studying successively in Paris and at the Villa Romana in Florence, he came back to Germany where he organized the first exhibition “Rundschau Deutschland” in Munich and Cologne in 1981 and founded, with other figurative artists, the “Neue Wilde” movement which marks the return of figurative art inspired mostly by “The Fauves”. In 1994, Szczcesny moved to New York and then founded the Szczcesny Factory in 1996. In the middle of the 1990’s, he relocated his Studio on the Mustique Island. The Caribbean and tropical environment incarnates for the artist the continuity of the Mediterranean spirit and “way of life” and inspires his work which becomes even more opulent, sensual, colorful and radiant. Travelling all around the world, taking part to numerous and famous exhibitions, Stefan Szczesny moved in 2001 to Saint-Tropez where he lives and works in his Atelier.

www.ftn-books.com has Galerie Hans Barlach catalog available on this artist.

All through her oeuvre, Roos Theuws (1957, the Netherlands) has been dissecting her medium, slowly, radically, and on a razor’s edge. Light and sound are physical phenomenon, their coherence a product of interpretation.  Her awareness of this fact is beautifully exploited in both her photography and video installations, causing the image in front of the viewer to fall into irreconcilable pieces, so that we too can’t help but share her awareness.

Theuws teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her work has been shown at, among others, the Tokyo Biennial in Japan, The Kitchen in New York, US, the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Germany and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Her work is held in various public and private collections, such as Huis Marseille in Amsterdam and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

www.ftn-books.com has a few Theus publications available