Arnold Schalks
Arnold Schalks is an independent visual artist, graphic designer, web designer, set & lighting designer, theatre maker, performer, poet, publicist, editor, publisher, curator, teacher and organizer of art events. In the period from 1997 to 2001 he made three music theatre performances under the name Bühne de BovenLucht in a former factory building on the Rotterdamse Keileweg. Since 2003 he has been involved in the design of (music) theatre productions of various calibres at home and abroad. Between 2004 and 2005 he organises six interdisciplinary events with a theatrical component in 'art space' the Vrije Schuur, a small log cabin in the backyard of his home in the Oude Noorden district of Rotterdam. His move in 2009 to a SKAR studio on the Osseweistraat in Rotterdam gives him the opportunity to start OCW (a corruption of the word 'Ossewei'), a stage for small-scale events. There he starts crimmp (= creative reduction in multimedia practice), a series of multidisciplinary performances in which reduction is seen as an added value. Seven years later the stage moves to a classroom on the ground floor of a former primary school, now SKAR property, at Drievriendenstraat 26. The words 'small scale' and 'hospitality' connect the three initiatives mentioned above, which emphatically operate on the margins of the art business.
Djojo and Versteeg
Djojo & Versteeg consists of two multidisciplinary artists. Rik Versteeg (1990) graduated as a Fine-Art photographer in 2013 and Danny Djojosoedarmo (1993) is a self-educated make-up artist and stylist. The duo with at the Willem de Kooning academy in Rotterdam.
By combining forces we found a way to complement each other's skills and create images that capture the essence of human experience. We convey our images (concepts) into a fantasy realm, marked out with both imagination and a thought-provoking reference to the real world.
We aim to create aesthetic, conceptual and stylized imagery based on social themes. Using topics that are currently playing a social role in society, we want to trigger the minds of our viewer.
Our images unveil a careful process that can be considered an investigation about the liminal area in which imagination and perceptual reality find an unexpected point of convergence. We aim to show the viewer an undiscovered and subconscious world with our photography.
We draw most of our inspiration from theories, myths, technology and gender, but most importantly; the way the human being is able to relate to it.
By de-constructing a two-dimensional concept and layering it again, we are able to create new images with a twist. These images are open for a broad interpretation and stimulate our viewers' physique.
Work:
Our images are the end result of a careful process.
We investigate the point where fantasy and reality meet.
We create aesthetic and stylized images that can be used for artistic and commercial purposes.
Starting off from a customized concept where we appeal to the imagination and subconsciousness of the viewer.
Myths, technologies, theories and diversity issues are a few of the subjects where we draw most of our inspiration from.
With this information we constantly ask ourselves the question in
which way the humans can relate to our reality.
Efrat Zehavi
The Museum of Subjective Science is a collection of images, drawings, collages, animations, installations and short stories, which have a common research topic: my own self-image and its formation.
I always take on a different 'role' when making work: sometimes I am a woman, sometimes a Jewess, Israeli or migrant. I can be a daughter, granddaughter or mistress. By looking at myself from a different perspective, and by studying my relationships with my relatives or (pre)parents, I tell the same story from different angles, and in this way I shed light on different aspects of my identity and origin.
In the title of the project 'Subjective Science' there is an inner contradiction that I consciously play with. It is impossible to be the researcher and the guinea pig at the same time. But that is what I am trying to do. The use of irony creates distance from myself, and in this way I achieve some objectivity. Also, my images, collages, scenes, animations or short stories are based on years of observations, concrete life experiences, autobiographical facts and self-analysis.
Still, knowing that it is impossible to ever find out the right answer or 'the truth', I continue to produce new work & develop working methods. After all, through something to which there is no definitive answer, spaces are created that can be filled with one's own imagination and idiosyncratic theories. I use, for example, knowledge about psychology, (neuro)biology, Chinese acupuncture or yoga, which I connect in an associative way.
themuseumofsubjectivescience.com
www.passportraits.com
www.dichtkunstkrant.nl
Jeanne Rombouts
The starting point for Rombouts' work (drawings: charcoal and chalk on paper) is her direct involvement with the clay soil of the IJsselmeer polders.
Her father was one of the first farmers in eastern Flevoland.
The memory of this landscape plays an important role in her work:
- the power of the vast clay plain
- the width, the space, the light
- the air that touches and draws the earth
- the perspective lines of the furrows
- the movement in the clay soil by ploughing, sowing and harvesting
- the different structures (large, oily clods in the plough front - fine clay granules in the newly sown beet plots)
Landscapes, transparent ground profiles, figures, torsos and portraits undergoing
interact and overlap.
Chalk and charcoal lines and stains, ranging from light grey to deep black, move and crawl within the given context.
Let the light of the paper shine and form organic systems in which natural forces play an important role.
The landscape as a complex whole that does not want to reveal its secrets.
The landscape becomes a self-portrait.
