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10 April 2020, Katelijn Bergman
Where the imagination transcends the narrative
Katelijn Bergman is a visual artist and founder of Popinnart. The artist-run, nomadic art collective started in an anti-squat building in Amsterdam in 2018 and is now making good progress with changing exhibitions featuring contemporary work by twenty-five artists. Because of her great expertise, we asked Katelijn to curate a collection.
"As a painter I often ask myself:" Where is the dividing line between illustrative work, the more literal representation of reality, and autonomous art: the artist's own interpretation of his reality? How do you visualize the narrative without being explicit? In a 2017 interview accompanying his 'Lonely Old Slogans' exhibition at the Camden Arts Center, Daniel Richter states:
The works I have selected are in line with this statement and are poetic in that sense too: they tell a story through various visual elements which the artist has carefully mastered and then brought together in a new context. And it’s in that specific context – a total environment – where a painting acquires its meaning."
"As a painter I often ask myself:" Where is the dividing line between illustrative work, the more literal representation of reality, and autonomous art: the artist's own interpretation of his reality? How do you visualize the narrative without being explicit? In a 2017 interview accompanying his 'Lonely Old Slogans' exhibition at the Camden Arts Center, Daniel Richter states:
"A painting is about the information layer and its implementation, and subsequently about where the two coincide and manage to produce an aesthetic added value."
The works I have selected are in line with this statement and are poetic in that sense too: they tell a story through various visual elements which the artist has carefully mastered and then brought together in a new context. And it’s in that specific context – a total environment – where a painting acquires its meaning."
0 Media items ᛫ 11 Available artworks
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A fascinating allegory of dream and reality, past and present, mythology, Rauhfaser wallpaper and kitchen tiles. You sense a story, a poem, and become curious. The combination of eclectic components seems arbitrary, while the arrangement of these elements is the only correct one. Very compelling actually, while the visual language is free and loose. Although it is an a-tectonic painting - the representation is partly depicted, which you supplement it with your imagination thus involving the space outside the painting - the story unravels very specifically within the frame. Funny are the trident-like shapes that often recur in his works and serve as a jester’s hat, demon’s horn, a crown, a battlement, the decoration of a frame, the spout of a magic lamp ... So many contrasts, but very convincing in dialogue.
0 Media items ᛫ 1 Available artworks
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A diffuse, aesthetic and abstract rendition of urban graffiti. Standing on the shoulders of underground art, Kaspar Dejong is "scratching" his own work. A break in style, an attack, a tag about a poetic landscape. In doing so, he demarcates his own a state or territory, his New Babylon.
0 Media items ᛫ 7 Available artworks
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In the summer of 1971 I collected pieces of glass in every imaginable shade of sea-green along the Spanish coast. They were enchanting in colour and soft and sandblasted round by the hot beach. The rudiments of bottles of liquor at bygone beach parties.
This assemblage by Anneke Eussen evokes that memory. Despite the heaviness and hardness of the material (bus and car windows), it is light, layered and transparent and reflects a history.
This assemblage by Anneke Eussen evokes that memory. Despite the heaviness and hardness of the material (bus and car windows), it is light, layered and transparent and reflects a history.
0 Media items ᛫ 6 Available artworks
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Daily life in black and white. The composed presentations are confidential because of the domestic, festive or political elements and the narrative setting, but above all wonderfully alienating in a way you immediately embrace.
0 Media items ᛫ 3 Available artworks
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Dave de Leeuw's autobiographical work has all those different elements that I fall for, the contrasting lines, the dreamy way of telling the story, the layering, the choice of colour, the structure of the paint and the sensitivity of the drawing and painting. Truly a work to get lost in.
4 Media items ᛫ 0 Available artworks
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Martha Colburn makes stop-motion films on ponderous themes such as death, fear, dictators and war. After thorough research and with the use of thousands of photos - which she also applies paint to - she mixes her material into a kind of LSD-like trip in which the story is leading. In the execution she uses illustrative elements and images that she redefines, creating a surreal context. She does this through 'in-camera editing', a technique in which the sequence, a collection of images that together tell a story, is elaborated in its entirety and then filmed in one go.
Curated by:
Katelijn Bergman