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Cees Braakman‘s SB02 is an unexpectedly rich source of ideas. It’s amazing how a casual discovery can yield such a series of images. For years I saw this SB02 with some regularity until at some point I noticed the resemblance of the placement of the screws to fix the backrest with eyes and mouth or nose. Drawn for the first time in the portrait series. Kijk! is also one of the earlier ones in this area. Some other designs also turned out to have these ‘facial features’: Backman, Couple or Portrait 33. Or what about ‘Encounter II‘.
Babels end III
When falling turns into a choreography with a carefully orchestrated place for all in the whole, the memory fades and the biblical story becomes a myth, and this composition the new reality. Everyday chairs next to icons from the design world, all the same and all different. Painted shadows compete with real shadows , providing a pleasant tingle that subtly changes with the passing of the hours.
Exit VI
This so-called button chair is a very common chair with many local varieties such as the Drentse or Brabant button chair. Relatively easy made just about anywhere, this was a godsend for the less wealthy environments by using readily available cheap materials. Maybe by far the most renowned example although without a knob, is the one painted by Vincent van Gogh ‘Chair with pipe‘ in the collection of the National gallery in London.
Escher in Oirschot IV
Is a frame drawn here to select a part for editing or an image, as is done on a computer? Or is the drawn chair growing out of its jacket?
Reluctantly, the maker here enters the third dimension and at the same time it remains a drawing on the wall. What is another list and how and when do you use it?
Finishing touch (Pinocchio)
After having drawn the De SBo2 by Cees Braakman many times in several ways, it is actually strange looking back that only after the Pinocchio, Pinocchio II and Pinocchio III saw the light of day, I made the connection between a pencil that just touches the paper and exactly in the right place, so that such a pencil actually becomes a Pinocchio together with the drawing. Now then it is only a matter of because still to be recorded, literally that is.
Exit V (Ponti)
The Superleggera, still in production by the Italian manufacturer Cassina, an ingenious design by architect Gio Ponti certainly deserves a tribute! But is that allowed in two dimensions? Does that do full justice to this design, this chair? The answer is contained in this work: Exit.
Ik ben geen stoel
An unmistakable expression of this chair, ehh, drawn chair. A playful reference to the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte and in particular to his famous painting ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe‘.
Is a drawn chair just as much chair? Mentally, yes, then it is the image in your head. But if you want to sit on it? I find this crossing from concept to image to archetype and back again very fascinating. See, for example, the drawing ‘Strip’.
Conceived in an edition of 5, the first from 2017 has been sold. These four are all just completed. Of course I can make one in English, French, etc.
Exit IV
When the limitations of two dimensions are too heavy for you, you have to step out. Push your limits and enter the third dimension!
See also Exit I, II and III and Escher in Oirschot III and Stairway to heaven.
Exit III
Gerrit Rietveld, as a furniture maker and architect, naturally had a strong preference for three dimensions. So it’s no surprise that this design of his, the military chair, frees itself from the limitations of two dimensions.
See also Exit I and II and Escher in Oirschot III and Stairway to heaven.
Exit II
What if the depicted subject no longer settles for living in two dimensions? Is this the exit leading to relief?
See also related works Exit I, III, IV, Escher in Oirschot II and Stairway to heaven.
Exit I
“I have received your work in good order. How nice of you to send a book with it.
I found you because I googled ‘Oirschotse chair’. I grew up in Oirschot and have always continued to come there until my father recently passed away. I looked for a memento of my beautiful old village, but there is little to be found and what you come across is very old-fashioned. This work of yours immediately appealed to me, especially because there is humor in it, because that suits my father. I am very happy with it, it will have a nice place in my living room.”
(according to the buyer of this work)
See also the related works Exit II, III, IV, Escher in Oirschot II and Stairway to Heaven.
Thinking about…
One of the first members of the artists’ association Hoorn a.s. (that ‘and surroundings’ extends as far as at least Tilburg apparently) has come up with the idea of choosing a work from those members and having the other members respond to it with a work. No one else had any influence on the clutch. Everything was shown at the ‘Encounters’ exhibition in De Boterhal in Hoorn in honor of the association’s 50th anniversary. The Boterhal is the permanent operating base. I was handed a work by Paul Stap. Polychromed wood which he found in his backyard. Paul is (has been) a passionate diver.
‘Thinking of…’ is my reaction to the work of Paul Stap and was therefore shown at the exhibition.
Escher in Oirschot III
The impact of Escher’s visit to Oirschot, first recorded by me in 1989 (Escher in Oirschot) is much greater than I dared to dream in the previous millennium. In fact, there were no dreams at all in this regard. The follow up also took quite a while. Last year I made Escher in Oirschot II: a connection between two frames by means of the bars of the backrest. In this way, the work also somewhat annexes the environment in which it hangs. In this work even the third dimension is entered.
Mirror me
The ‘overshoulder‘ frequently used in film and comics has the disadvantage that you cannot see this figure (shape) in question. In a film or comic you solve this by using multiple images, before and/or after, but if you only have one? Then a mirror is of course an option. An additional advantage is that as a viewer you also become (partly) part of the work.
Droste-effect III
The repetition of the image in the image is named after the storage tin of the Dutch chocolate manufacturer Droste. I already referred to this in my work Droste effect. In this case, I add another layer spatially by letting the framed drawing repeat itself. Shadow effect thus becomes an essential part of the image.