AQUIL COPIER
PAINTINGS
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BIOGRAPHY
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Essay by
Ilse van Rijn, 2008.
DUTCH | ENGLISH
Lennard Dost
De Volkskrant 19/11/08
Hoe weinig zie je eigenlijk op Google-Earth achtige luchtfoto? >>
Rutger Pontzen
De Volkskrant 20/10/07
Meer bindmiddel dan pigment >>
Paola van de Velde
De Telegraaf
22/10/07
Jongleren met verf en vormen >>
Antonie den Ridder
Beelden
4#2007
Een kunstqueeste naar het bossche land >>
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What means to see an image? What is the relationship between a painted image and the reality that we see (what is real and what is not)? What is a painted image about? What makes painting necessary today, when plenty other images ‘flood’ our eyes all the time?
These are the main questions I have as an artist. In order to answer those questions I paint landscapes, bird-views of countryside or cities photographed from an airplane, or taken by software like Google-Earth.
In the way I treat/paint those images, I intentionally play between figurative and abstract modes. The paintings seem to represent existing towns, villages or mountains (sometimes I even put name on them), but the way I paint them often make them very abstract images. Trees, houses, polders become squares of colour, zigzagged threads of oil paint or vanishing shapes. It is precisely this ‘look alike’, ‘as if’ those landscapes would represent real cities and places, the effect I want to reach.
My images do not tell a story, nor they are based on a memory. They are about painting itself and what an image can say. How people can relate to images, and distinguish what is true or possibly true.
My recent works can be divided in two kinds. In some works, the images are still recognizable places (real or fictional), but I intentionally exaggerate elements, like borders and depths; I change the original colors of the starting image; I combine different perspectives in one painting; or I insert icons and graphical elements that can be found in specific software. In other works instead, I ‘abstract’ the elements present in the original image. I use airbrush or I add transparent layers to vanish the outlines of the shapes. Those images are more poetic, in a way. In both cases, however, the real effect I search for is to capture the viewer’s attention towards the materiality of the painting itself, in order to question the reality, and ‘truthfulness’, of what we see.
The perception of reality has been one of the main subjects of research both in art and science. Nowadays, thanks to the development of digital media (social networks, video-games like “World of Warcraft”, and specific software’s like Google-Earth), real and virtual worlds are constantly overlapping, and this creates a new area of investigation on what representation of reality can be. In my view, this gives a new challenge to painting. By painting ‘contemporary’ landscapes in an unorthodox ways, I want to reflect on this. While during the Renaissance, a painting was intended as a ‘window’ on the world, my paintings now are a window on a world of a possible reality.
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