For this year's Art Island 2022, Stigter van Doesburg proudly presents artworks by Daniel van Straalen, Lucas Lenglet, Wolfgang Messing, and Thijs Kauffman.
Lucas Lenglet
In his work, Lucas Lenglet explores the role of the border as a meeting of interior and exterior, exclusivity and inclusivity and protection and threat. In the video work titled Running (1997), the artist is trying to both run from and walk towards himself caught in an endless loop. The series untitled (reflection) (2022), consisting of sometimes multiple layers of different sorts of reflective insulation tape, question the fragmentation of one’s (self)reflection and the impossibility of ever truly knowing oneself.
Daniel van Straalen
Daniel van Straalen’s art works not only across media but also time and space. With the use of his childhood drawings, his works have roots in the past while the incorporation of digital media and meme culture brings them not only in the present but well into the future. Flowers (2021) and can't mistakey if not awakey (2022) are two in the series of works that transform digital meme culture into a graspable reality.
Wolfgang Messing
By painting the images originally shot on film and later multiplied on the internet, Wolfgang Messing questions the role of the oil painting in the past and present, the reasons behind the motifs depicted, and the representative function of mass media. By portraying some of the pioneers of underground music, his work serves as a reminder of the kinds of popular music and poetry that went beyond mere entertainment, arising from a certain urge, and enabling freedom of expression that was otherwise unimaginable and is again under threat today. Using a medium as traditional as painting to reflect on digital media, Wolfgang questions the connection between the physical world and digital reality.
Thijs Kauffmann
Thijs Kauffmann films a street view with his 16mm film camera. He captures the blurry and abstract lights that move rhythmically with the background noises of motorcycles, cars, and the laughs from passersby. Through the embodiment of pixels and the time-to-time silences, Kauffmann highlights the contrast between light and darkness.