27 may 2024, Wouter van den Eijkel
The studio of... Klaas Kloosterboer
Klaas Kloosterboer had a studio in downtown Amsterdam for 40 years, building an abstract oeuvre around ideas and materials. A few years ago, he traded it for a studio in the countryside, which Kloosterboer calls a practical compromise. Initially, he feared he wouldn't be able to work as well as he did in the city, but it turns out that nothing could be further from the truth. “Apparently, I am the one who creates the work, not the circumstances.”
Kloosterboer's fifth solo exhibition, Met opzet en zonder (Intentionally and not), is currently on display at Kristof DeClercq. It mainly features works from the last three years, but also includes pieces from the past 15 years. For some time now, Kloosterboer has talked about so-called found compositions, such as a palette that is a composition in itself. “There is a process that generates work without me being entirely involved.” Intentionally and not.
Where is your studio and what does it look like?
To me, the perfect studio is large, centrally located in the city and free! So, a practical compromise is the countryside. I also find it good to shake myself up a bit after 40 years in Amsterdam. Initially, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to work – or at least not as well – but it turns out that the opposite is true. Apparently, I am the one who creates the works, not the circumstances. Here, it feels more like a struggle for survival – for everyone, because there is literally nothing here. When I’m here, I think more about the outside world, how the work fits within it. Also, about how strange it is to make art in such emptiness. To me, making art is more connected to the city, where there is other art and other people. In short, something more social and not so much connected to nature.
Klaas Kloosterboer, 23117, 2023, Kristof De Clercq gallery
Do you have any specific requirements for a studio?
The greatest advantage of making art is being alone. It's a very strange idea to think that I’ve been sitting alone in a room for 40 years, just making art. But it requires concentration and focus, at least when it goes well. Of course, art cannot happen without context and dialogue, not to mention resistance. If you say you are shaped by context (a product of the environment), then you must create such an environment in which you, the product, are shaped as you wish. I used to think such things. That’s why I wanted to live in Amsterdam. What I now think is that you absorbed everything until you were 60 and now it’s time for output. That’s how I present it to myself. But I see that I create what suits me.
Congratulations on Intentionally and not! The exhibition mainly features work from the last three years, but the oldest pieces are from 2009. Your work is a vast exploration of the tension between action and abstraction. How has that exploration evolved over the past 15 years?
I would say ‘ideas and materials’. In 1990, I moved into the studio on Rozengracht. I started with two new works: first, the sentence ‘ability to act implicates loss of innocence’, now translated into ‘acts of meaning are acted acts’. The second work was a drawing of a shelving unit full of boxes filled with ideas and a table with a pile of clay. This was because I felt limited by working with instinct (and perhaps truth). So, I looked for another approach that could be more fruitful. This is why I am interested in attitude and perspective. After all, it’s much more fun to tell 1,000 lies instead of one truth.
Klaas Kloosterboer, 22175, 2022, Kristof De Clercq gallery
Do you remember how and when you came up with this theme and approach?
Initially, I thought about thematising studio work. Can work in a studio generate content as if in a laboratory? For some years now, I’ve talked about found compositions in the studio, a term coined by Merk Kremer. Normally, we speak of a palette, mixtures of paint on wood. Those mixtures can inspire paintings, but those mixtures themselves are also works of art. There is a process that generates work without me being entirely involved.
Is that what you mean by Intentionally and Not, the title of the exhibition?
Yes. For Kristof, I would make small works of art and that was partly successful. But when photographing early work, I encountered large works and that discovery was so surprising that I started making large works again (300 x 300 cm). Kristof was immediately drawn to the work and it proved irresistible to him and the three large works are now on display in his gallery.
Klaas Kloosterboer, 22147, 2022, Kristof De Clercq gallery
Which work in the show required the most effort to create. In other words, which one required the most thought beforehand?
Nowadays, I think differently about creating art. It’s doing what you do, it happens naturally. I want to test the extremes, see where the boundaries of the idea lie, where the idea ceases to be effective.
In Intentionally and Not, only canvases are on display, but I remember installations with burlap sacks, bags of cotton, sailcloth packages in which you explored the boundaries between 2D and 3D work. Will we see these again one day?
One of the discoveries of this exhibition was that the sculptures had to go. I did bring them with me, but they did not go well with the paintings. The paintings not only fill the walls, but the entire space, providing a spatial experience. You might say there is a kind of solidified air in the space. Paintings are not images, but a residue of action.
Klaas Kloosterboer, Met opzet en zonder, Kristof De Clercq gallery
