The Space Between is Casper Faassen's gallery debut at the Amsterdam branch of Bildhalle. The show offers a fantastic overview of the work of an autodidact from Leiden who developed his own working method at the interface between photography and painting. A wide selection of his series about dancers, moonlight and clouds and vases can be seen in the basement and first floor on Willemsparkweg. A conversation about transience, a passion for collecting and the influence of Japan on his work. “I consider it my job as an artist to capture the temporary.”
Ma
“The title of the exhibition has several meanings. I like to place myself literally and figuratively at a distance from my subject,” says Faassen (NL, 1975) over the phone. He has been drawing and painting since childhood and started by taking photographs as preliminary studies for his paintings. Although Faassen enjoyed photography, he found the medium too direct and himself as the photographer too present in the image. “I wanted to distance myself from the subject. As a viewer, you never get closer than with paint on canvas.”
Over the years, Faassen translated this idea into his own working method in which he prints pictures on a transparent material, frosted glass or double-sided acrylic, and then paints them on the opposite side, so that the viewer has to make more of an effort to see the image. The effect is like looking through a haze. “Where I don't want transparency, I paint it white. This creates a negative space in the image, which originates from the Japanese concept of ‘ma’, a celebration of space. I am increasingly drawn to that emptiness.”
Japanese influences
Since De dingen die voorbijgaan (The Things That Pass), his exhibition at the Japan Museum Sieboldhuis in the spring of 2017, the influence of Japanese culture on his work cannot be underestimated. For this exhibition, Faassen was inspired by Japanese bijin prints (beautiful women) by 19th-century print artist Utagawa Kunisada. Faassen made works with familiar themes, such as women in luxurious kimonos, swirling snowflakes and blooming cherry blossoms. Faassen finished the melancholy images with craquelures.
For Faassen, these craquelures are a reversal of the Calvinist tradition as expressed in the well-known vanitas still lifes, usually depicting skulls, candles and flowers. The message was ‘remember to die’. Instead, focus on eternal life, for all beauty in the sublunary is temporary and ultimately vanity.
Faassen, on the other hand, invites the viewer to enjoy this temporary beauty. “Enjoy the beauty before it is gone.” The craquelures not only emphasise the transient nature of beauty, but by inlaying them with a layer of gold leaf, just like in the Japanese Kintsugi tradition in which fracture lines of repaired pottery are provided with a layer of gold leaf, they are actually given added value. “These are scars of value; a reversal of the vanitas theme.”
Hover through the Fog
This view of beauty also explains many of Faasen's subject choices. He recently made the series Hover through the Fog and Filthy Air with two dancers from the Nederlands Dans Theater. Several works from this series are on display at Bildhalle. There is also a film installation in the form of a booth with frosted glass at the front, behind which the dancers repeatedly appear and disappear.
Dance and music are the ultimate art forms with a highly temporary nature. After the notes have been played and the choreography has come to an end, the work of art no longer exists, at least not until the next performance. This also applies to the other themes that The Space Between showcases: moonlight in the recent series View on the Moon (2023) and the clouds in the series Nuages (2022). Yet, Faassen also fails to completely shake off the Calvinist tradition, when he confesses that “as a photographer-painter, you freeze those transient moments. Sometimes I also feel guilty about adding the dancers to my collection.”
Herzamelen
Collecting, or rather re-collecting, is another common theme in Faassen's work. Born and raised in Leiden, his parents took Faassen to the Rijksmuseum as a child to see Rembrandt’s Night Watch. It turned out to be a defining moment, because what started with a card from the museum shop and weeks of copying the Night Watch led to a lifelong fascination for his well-known fellow townsman. The idea of walking along the same streets and seeing the same things as Rembrandt gradually gave way to collecting objects that Rembrandt used in his works. “Rembrandt was a collector and I share his passion for collecting. I began collecting objects that Rembrandt used in his studio, starting with a hauberk, which he used to teach students how to paint iron.”
Faassen is not only interested in Rembrandt's inventory, but also those of Siebold, the physician and botanist who spent years at the Dutch trading post Deshima, and Morandi could count on his passion for collecting. The series of still lifes with pottery that can now be seen at Bildhalle was inspired by the question: what does Morandi see in a simple vase that makes it a special work?
Faassen is now well past the point of looking at others to learn the trade. He has found his own visual language within the classical genre of still life, with his own process and craquelure as his signature. What has remained is the tempering effect of drawing: “By painting something myself, I alleviate the need to own it. It's the same principle as with the girl from the O'Neill diary; if I can draw it, I don't need to have it."
The Space Between by Casper Faassen can be seen until May 27 at Bilhalle on Willemsparkweg in Amsterdam