Les collections

Gabriel Lester

A collection that reads like a poem

Gabriel Lester (1972) was born in Amsterdam, where he had found his way as an inventor, visual artist and film director early on. Lester's creativity knows no boundaries and includes music, film, spatial installations, performance art, sculpture, architecture, photography and prose. On top of all this, he is a gifted storyteller. He just loves the power of words. He himself says about his work: "In my visual art and films I often dissect images, language and form. In art I am looking for the boundaries of an image in relation to the story and vice versa, whereas in films I look for the boundaries of a story in relation to the image. I am not looking for unambiguous solutions, but I am fascinated by the conditions and desires that influence our perception. I want to offer the spectator mental exercises. I do this by presenting work that is elastic in terms of image, language, meaning and interpretation."

Gabriel selected eight text-based artworks for his collection. And Gabriel wouldn't be Gabriel if he wouldn't use the texts in the artworks, hence his collection contains a poem:

Let’s play pretend
Go home
Erase Awareness
This is the fall out
Drawing blues
Mirage
Die slow

Maurice Nuiten

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 16 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

A lot of modern comedy revolves around the fact that the characters or comedians do and say things that we would like to do or say in everyday life, but don’t because it is indecent. The fact of a party garland that encourages the reader/spectator to pretend to act, which is an indecent exhortation, but a very common idea about birthdays nonetheless: fake laughter, pretending that no stress or arguments have taken place prior to the party and pretend we like each other. For me, the fact that this text is hung in the form of a somewhat forced smile yields a very comical doubling.

Sarah Maple

3 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 9 Oeuvres disponibles

2 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Somehow this is an ominous image to me. The longer I look at it the more intrigued I am. I am the kind of viewer who wonders whether Home was already on the back of the globe when Go was being photographed, or vice versa. I want to see the invisible. What appeals to me is the simplicity in this image and at the same time the versatility of the meaning “go home”. Does it read Go and Home as separate words or does it refer to one’s home?

Rory Pilgrim

4 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 23 Oeuvres disponibles

5 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 1 Recommandations

This work is explained in detail on the website. Apart from the context in which it is shown, the image itself evokes other associations in me. In my mind, this work is like sound, a slowly dying sound. But I also associate it with a stamp, the ink of which fades. For me, the work is about form, sculptural and acoustic. It has body language, an attitude. And it is a kind of air mirror that floats above a spot, a spot on the horizon that we cannot yet perceive.

Mariëlle Videler

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 34 Oeuvres disponibles

2 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

This work is a word. This word can mean alertness, but also consciousness. It is wrapped, almost concealed, in camouflage, in patterns. The word is interwoven with the surface. Alert and aware, but actually hidden and sunken. It’s there dancing in front of your eyes, yet elusive. An animal that spies its prey through the leaves in the rainforest ... alertness and consciousness at the same time.

Fabian Herkenhoener

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 5 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

The title of this work - which is the work itself – urges me to find out exactly what this particular expression means. Without investigating this, I am under the impression that it is in any case also about the moment after the disaster, after the nuclear disaster. I remember something like that. Nuclear fallout. The title, the work and the meaning seem to fall off the canvas. The text seems to be written with the fire of a lighter, as is often the case in public toilets. In the end, I looked up the expression. That your hair falls out, that something collapses, diving, dropping something, letting go, a parachutist, a shower, a trip, suddenly collapsing, a crumbling, tripping and losing one’s balance. It all fits.

Berend Strik

1 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 5 Oeuvres disponibles

3 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

This is a work in which text in the drawing tells everything and nothing at the same time. The artist longs for drawing, perhaps longs for his youth, for lost spontaneity. Two slippers float between what appears to be a self-portrait of the artist as a young man and the text at the top of the artwork. It's a few worn-out old slippers - the blues. The desire to draw. In German, there is a word like Fernweh, which means as much as the desire to be far away. Far away, back to the old days when you could still draw unrestrained. Without too many concepts… or style. The "far away blues" on your slippers.

Lieven Hendriks

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 10 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

I see the dust stuck on cars. Children write “dirty” or “yuck” with their fingers or draw faces or genitals. The normally reflective, shiny cars from the commercials have become matte dust boxes. You can write on them. In comparison, the text is like a phantom of its own meaning. A mirage. A dream in dust.

Midas Zwaan

4 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 0 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 1 Recommandations

The last two words of the poem. Die slow. People often prefer to go out with a bang rather than going out like a night candle. But a bang also dies slowly. The bang roars over the earth and becomes softer, until it is inaudible to the human ear and only resonates in the sound organ of the bat. The bat. A prehistoric animal. Speaking of bangs: to die slowly is to live slowly.