30 november 2021, Wouter van den Eijkel
Erik de Bree - Soviet Series
During our video call, Erik de Bree turns the camera to his treasure-trove, a cupboard filled with hundreds of rolls of wallpaper. “Look, this is my Soviet archive”. De Bree takes a roll from one of the shelves and points to the edge where the manufacturer's name is written in Cyrillic script. "I can't read it, but I want to use it." The Bree's Soviet Series can be seen at Galerie Torch until the end of the year.
Erik de Bree (NL, 1977) talks about his latest work with the same joyful energy a viewer will get from looking at his work. De Bree makes collages and usually uses wallpaper for this. He tears the often dated wallpapers in such a way that a cheerful image is created. For De Bree, the creative process is an essential part of the final result. By showing all the layers of paper, he invariably succeeds in involving the viewer in the making process.
De Bree's second show at the Torch gallery is a logical continuation of his first show two years ago. Albeit that this time around the wallpaper used for his collages come from a country that no longer exists as such: Ukraine, the republic of the former Soviet Union.
Erik de Bree, Soviet Series #7, 2021, TORCH.
Well over 100 kilos of wallpaper
De Bree was pointed to the Soviet wallpapers by a Ukrainian friend of his. She pointed him to the Ukrainian version of Gumtree and gave him a number of search terms. “Initially, I only had a few keywords, but that didn't work. Later I asked her to arrange everything for me. Within the Ukraine, everything was sent to Kiev and from there to me in bulk. I eventually received four packages with a totalling well over 100 kilos of wallpaper from the period 1960-1990.”
Erik de Bree, Soviet Series #53, 2021, TORCH.
“You do notice that people don't throw much away there. The smaller packages often contained a small strip of another wallpaper. They must have held on to that for ages” continues De Bree. ”I had to get used to the paper. It has other properties. That is why I first made a series of smaller works. The quality is sometimes mediocre. It is single-layer, for example, while that is not usual over here. But then the pattern is very nice again and I would like to use it. For example, they made extensive use of block printing techniques. It looks great and is very labour-intensive.”
(N)ostalgia
The retro wallpapers have been ingeniously cut and torn and pasted in such a way that it makes you happy and you can hardly imagine that these collages were made by someone in a gloomy state of mind. At least, that applies to someone with a Western frame of reference.
The reactions of passers-by who had grown up in the waning days of the Soviet Union have been mixed. De Bree: “Most say something like: No, really?! They immediately recognize the wallpaper patterns from their childhood, and initially think 'how nice, a Russian artist would never do this' and in the second instance: 'but not everything was great in those days'.”
Erik de Bree, Soviet Series #46, 2021, TORCH.
The reason Ukrainians and Russians recognize the patterns almost instantly quite is simple: in a planned economy like the former Soviet Union, there was only a limited supply of products. That is why every interior was more or less a copy of each other. Gallery manager Jorre Both adds: “They appreciate that Erik handled it in a good and honest way”.
Circles, Squares and Rectangles
In many of the works, De Bree also incorporates elements of the 20th-century Russian avant-garde. Circles, squares and rectangles. He also made his first-ever sculpture for this show; using these very shapes.
Erik de Bree, Soviet Series #50, 2021, TORCH.
Yet, De Bree is most pleased with a large work hanging in the back of the gallery. “Normally, I never reflect on a work that long. For me, making a work is a kind of dialogue between the different pieces of paper, while with this work, at a certain point, I didn't know how to proceed. Then I hung it on a wall and looked at it for about six hours. At some point the penny dropped and I was able to finish it very quickly. That is perhaps the biggest change in my way of working.”
The Soviet Series by Erik de Bree can be seen until 31 December at Torch Gallery
