September 8, 2007

The Ex-pat in Holland




Now that my "official" review has been posted, and I am no longer obliged to sound like William F. Buckley, I thought that I would add a post about the review process and the memories it brought back. There were so many Dutch artists presented as well as expatriate Americans in Holland, I had to return to my old stomping ground and my previous days as an expatriate non-objective painter in Holland. In order to obtain some images and backround information, I had to go to Dutch websites. I am by no means a fluent Dutch speaker but I can at least negotiate my way to the "zoeken" button to search for images. But it was a pleasure to scan them - I even found myself beginning to mutter to myself in Dutch as I searched.
It was also a pleasure to speak with the curator and gallery owner, Wim Roefs, who happens to be from the area of Holland where I lived a number of years ago. Wim described to me his love of the process of art making - rare in curators. I was particularly impressed by the time he took to establish an intimate relationship with the artist's methods and techniques - even spending all day in an artist's studio to watch the creative process. No wonder artists like him.
I found an old photograph of an exhibition I had at the Gallerie de Vierde Dimensie in Plasmolen, Holland. The owner of the gallery and I had studied at the same institute in Maastricht years ago. We bonded over our love for ceramic sculpture (she did great work) and our spritely slavic natures (she's Czech I'm half Ukrainian). I've posted this evidence from my ancient history here along with a better view of one of the works from the exhibition. It sold at the exhibition and is in a private collection somewhere in Great Britain. I still do non-objective work on paper from time to time but it is for the most part off the record.
If you like minimalist non-objective work, click on the gallery page. In case you are not a Dutch speaker but want to see the work of the artists, click on the button that says "Kunstenaars" and you'll get a list of artist's names to scan. Have fun!

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