With the touch screen as an interface and computer programs that translate and manipulate a simple pen stroke into a digital code, Kleerebezem rediscovered the primary expressive power of line, shape, and color. The frictionless digital liberation of his artistic handwriting proved to be the ultimate condition for the unrestrained lyricism and hybrid media use in his recent works, where he blends digital and analog methods together. Throughout the summer months, the artist works on new drawings, paintings, and (photo-)graphic works in the exhibition space. Through Instagram and his project’s own website, he reflects on the creative process and the context of the media used.
Digital formats also offer the work different modes of distribution and reception, such as through Instagram and self-publishing on the web. While under the title “Notes, Quotes, Provocations and Other Fair Use” between 1998 and 2005, he published his entire production on the internet without fail, in what was one of the first Dutch weblogs, analog and digital processes intersect in his recent work.
Kleerebezem’s imagination freely draws from both a direct and highly mediated experience of reality. The ways in which the world and reality are perceived, captured, “measured,” and represented in increasingly computerized media, shape our worldview and self-image. In Jouke Kleerebezem’s work, perception continuously falls apart only to be reassembled through improvisation, intertwining once again.
www.ftn-books.com has now several books on Kleerebezem available.
