2020
Pinocchio III
Pinocchio and Pinocchio II preceded it. Pinocchio’s lies let his nose grow, so it can no longer be blocked by any frame. Gepetto’s intervention is required!
Pinocchio II
The three-point backrest of Cees Braakman’s chair SB02 for Pastoe gives it human traits through the three circles. Eyes and nose or eyes and mouth, just how you represent it. The disc of round wood with which the screw openings are concealed can grow back and compared to my earlier Pinocchio it has a real nose that has actually grown.
Encounter II
Cees Braakman’s SB02 appears to miss a mouth when he meets this school chair with a striking recess in the backrest. Thus this schoolchair may now realize that he/she is missing ‘something’, although he/she is not able to see it. But we do! See also Pair.
Pinocchio
The SB02, designed by Cees Braakman for Pastoe, with the characteristic circles in the backrest, offers plenty of opportunities to associate with. These circles hide the attachment for the backrest. However, they also form a face for those who look slightly differently. If such an opening is stopped with a round wood, Pinocchio actually appears automatically.
School
If chairs can walk, run and rest, they might also be able to think, right? In the pencil drawings Comic, I am not a chair and Telepathy, the comic language clearly finds its entrance into my work. In this work, which is part of an unspecified series, we look at the thoughts of Mart Stam‘s S31. Is he thinking about his own school days?
On my mind II
If chairs can walk, run and rest, they might also be able to think, right? In the pencil drawings Comic, I am not a chair and Telepathy, the comic language clearly finds its entrance into my work. In this work, which is part of an unspecified series, we look at the fantasies of a graceful armchair by Thonet, whose thoughts turn to Rietveld’s sturdy crate chair.
Arachnofobia
If chairs can walk, run and rest, they might also be able to think, right? In the pencil drawings Comic, I am not a chair and Telepathy, the comic language clearly finds its entrance into my work. In this work, which is part of an unspecified series, we look at the fantasies of my ‘primal chair’.
Babel’s end
The proverbial Babylonische confusion of tongues results in too much leeway in the carefully stacked chairs of the Tower. This leads to decline and collapse that we are witnessing here.
I used the cutting technique, which I first applied in Rietveld and later on in Descendants, again to gain extra depth, a wonderful effect.
Unlock
A paradox has been created by providing Cees Braakman’s SB02 with ten instead of three fixings for the backrest, and placing it behind bars. This creates a kind of Gordian knot or ouroboros-like impossibility.
See also the drawing Update from 2019. This creates a login look similar to a telephone.
Leerdammer chair II
Leerdam because of the famous Dutch cheese with holes, of course. The work goes back to the drawing ‘Leerdammer chair’ I made in the year 2000.
Where in that drawing only the drawn chair showed holes, in this one it didn’t stop there.
Pair
Two designs by Cees Braakman for Pastoe (a renowned Dutch furniture manufacturer) are here together as a pair from a family album.
Escher in Oirschot II
One of the first drawings that I made during my graduation phase at the Academy for Visual Education in Tilburg and that passed the selection was Escher in Oirschot. Escher because of the spatial joke and Oirschot because of the origin of the drawn chair. This one stood in the kitchen of the student house where my wife Sofia lived at that time. This is a variation where the Escher-like twist is in the play with frame, environment and drawing.
My Style
If chairs can walk, run and rest, they might also be able to think, right? In the pencil drawings Comic, I am not a chair and Telepathy, the comic language clearly finds its entrance into my work. In this work, which is part of an unspecified series, we look at the fantasies of Gerrit Rietveld‘s red-blue chair, who reflects on Theo van Doesburg‘s chair.
Dimensions II
The Building Plate that I drew in 2003 is a precursor. In this case, there is already some ‘building activity’ whereby the drawing takes place in two dimensions (but actually still in one).
The long march III
“We see a kind of section from a massive and all but endless row of swaying and wobbling chairs. The reference to the founder of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1920s, Mao Tse-Tung, is evident. Nevertheless such a title also allows thoughts about other large-scale migrations of living creatures. Think of the wildebeest in the African plains, or flows of refugees, escaping from whatever atrocities.” (from Chairs and Titles by Chris Manders in All in the Family, 2016)