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Three folding chairs
After Escher in Oirschot II and Stairway to heaven, the next step. The drawing, in this case a diptych, takes up part of your space with your cooperation and shows at that moment why it is called ‘three’ folding chairs, while clearly only two are depicted …
However, this relocation frees up the space on the wall again.
Levitation
In some earlier works, such as the watercolor Rietveld or the pencil drawing Swing II and more recently Relations, I make use of several layers in the image, just as in this one. This makes the light, or rather one of the consequences of light, namely shadow, an important element that determines the drawing and makes it more dynamic in a sense. The drawn chair separates itself from the drawing, as it were.
Stairway to heaven
Renowned Scottish architect Charles Rennie Macintosh designed buildings down to the finest detail and often went as far as just about the entire interior. That is why he also has quite a few chairs to his name. He is known for his Ladderback chair, limited to the latter. In the spirit of my earlier work ‘Escher in Oirschot II’, I chose this design for this ‘Stairway to heaven’ because of his ladder back.
Separated and at the same time undivided.
Shadowdancing IV
From the glitter ball, which hangs in a classic disco central above the dance floor, we watch the shuffle and twist of the colorful crowd.
If you look closely, you will see a limited variety of points of view of a chair from above, that have been carefully composed like a piece of music. The eye of the beholder dances from spatial to flat and also along with the performance in search of logic or a pattern.
Lockdown
At the end of the day, chair upside down on your table as a final chord. That leaves plenty of room for the sweeping team.
It looks like a seemingly familiar situation, but it soon turns out to be a special intergrowth with mainly adverse effects for the users. Moreover, as a result of this unification, the drawers can no longer be opened and thus the knowledge and materials stored in it are unaccessible: a Lockdown.
Naturally, the drawing refers to the countless classrooms that were inaccessible to millions of children worldwide during the corona crisis.
Stacking chairs II
At the beginning of this century I already drew a pencil drawing based on this triangle. The triangle is named after the British mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, but was first drawn in 1934 by the Swede Oscar Reutersvärd. I therefore called that pencil drawing ‘To Reutersvärd’. Because in my paintings, in contrast to the pencil drawings, I somehow have to ‘do something’ with the background, the environment, this concept did not lend itself to a painting in my view. The spatial gain that I achieve by mounting the shape (s) separately from the background, as in Babels end and Babels end II, for example, also offered opportunities for a Penrose triangle with Stacking Chairs. Et voilà.
Stripping Braakman
Welcome to the world of the SB01 designed by Cees Braakman and produced by the Dutch company Pastoe. This could just be the first page of this story that you as a viewer can complete. For now it is the first page. It is already framed to be hung on the wall in stead of placing it on a bookshelf between other books.
Mixed up III
Suppose you have trouble throwing things away. Who knows, every leftover can ever be used for something else. However, practice has also shown that many of those leftovers turn out to be just too small, thick, wrong in color, atmosphere or width and thus remain where they lie and slowly disappear from view, and end up in obscurity. A rigorous clean-up action usually seals the fate of these things. From a chair that I once literally slumped through, I have had some legs for years. That is how these chairs were created. As a kind of mental exercise, browsing through my chair books, I collected some parts here and there and assembled them into this two-seater.
And due to all the picture frames I have made over the years I had quite a lot small pieces of frames left… Then one and one is three isn’t it?
Happy feet
A classic office chair from the TU Delft collection dating from the beginning of the last century. The designer is unknown.
Mixed up II
Who knows, that bit, that leftover, may come in handy again. A good feature not to throw something away too quickly. I have often managed to solve something because I had ‘kept something somewhere’. The downside is that it can sometimes get out of hand and the amount of leftovers is more or less reluctant. For example, I saved some undamaged parts of a chair that I literally slumped through. Composing a new frame from leftover frame pieces requires a drawing in which the depicted chair is also composed of parts of (eight) other chairs.
Mixed up
Who knows, that bit, that leftover, may come in handy again. A good feature not to throw something away too quickly. I have often managed to solve something because I had ‘kept something somewhere’. The downside is that it can sometimes get out of hand and the amount of leftovers is more or less reluctant. For example, I saved some undamaged parts of a chair that I literally slumped through. Composing a new frame, a leftovers-frame, from preserved frame pieces requires a drawing in which the depicted chair is also composed of parts of (four) other chairs.
Cheese 0/10
This drawing ‘Cheese’, of course referring to the moment just before a photographer takes his shot for a portrait, was the reason for an assignment. Making this drawing in an edition of 10. The agreed 10 have been delivered to client Wonderwood in Amsterdam. This one, the starting point, remained. Therefore 0/10 which means there are actually eleven. Connoisseurs will of course immediately recognize Cees Braakman’s SB02.
Relations
Are we looking at a self-portrait here? Or is it a family member? From a previous generation possible? After all generation is also a form of relationship. Or is the relationship simply the front and back of this Pastoe chair designed by Cees Braakman?
Braakman’s gaze
One can see this as a kind of cartoon for on the wall: The making of the SB01 by Cees Braakman in the Pastoe factory in the 1960s. The four-panel work also unites earlier ideas such as one of the Portraits (sold), Pinocchio and Lie back and in that sense also tells another story.