Search and destroy - Ephemeral projects

Organic and lock are promissing

Super, continue !

mood of the big industrial city with a smog , cars , durty streets and so on.....

Your first one is brutal. I love it. I can see and dream looking at it. It has so much in it. It is very urban and therefore I think it moves fast like cities do. I look at the first one and I see it moving constantly. the 2 other ones are still and at peace.

i would like to see these finished, but for now i like the top one the best, and not just because it is the most representational at this point, but because it is the most expressive and therefore genuine to me.

Dear Niek, Thank you for your commentary, At first your reaction shows me that my little explanation above isn’t clear at all. The sentences look very naïve : These projects are meant to be erased and crushed. They are work in progress, and as they will live quite shortly, I wanted to expose their fragility. In fact, what is important in it is the « work in progress ». I don’t mean that the paintings will be destroyed by natural causes. They are just in a transitory step, sketches. So, they are waiting to be transformed, and then receive new layers of paint. About the second question : the way I destroy or transform the painting is, I admit, very conventionnal. And I even thought that I would name the first painting « Tribute to Willem de Kooning ». I saw a few Works of Sergej Jensen and I really enjoyed it. It corresponds for me to a certain kind of post-modern art, apparently liberated from all the movement that end in « ism » of the XX century. I guess that my starting point is not obvious. I’m a movie buff, and in the last five years I took more time watching films than attending painting exhibitions. I can imagine that it’s not easy to see. I use photogramms as ideas to develop a painting. For instance, my other serial “Breathe in Black” is almost completely based on films noirs, such as Out of the past (Jacques Tourneur), A girl in every Port, The big sleep (Howard Hawks). http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Out-of-the-past/129178 Working with this material can be considered as very classic. One of my influences is Francis Bacon, who is now a very established painter in the people’s mind. As you certainly know, his starting points were photographs coming from magazines (a picture from the film Potemkine by Eisenstein), more than natural inspirations. Besides, you said that Jensen doesn’t try to picture anything. I love the idea that the image itself may determine the composition. I plan to work with this in mind. But, I still work with the need of keeping a figure, something recognizable. There is this fantastic book from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze : Francis Bacon, Logique de la sensation. Deleuze explains that Bacon’s paintings are always in between, not totally abstract, not totally realistic and he calls it “figural” in french. You are right when you say that I should turn away from the “formalistic abstract expressionism”, it is a prison, an instinctive and lovely prison, but still, a jail. I believe, I should work on my subjects and the processes that follow. One more time, thank you for your helpful comment. Sam

Niek Lekkerkerk seems to be very "on topic" and interested, so , my comment is read with attention his words!good work! ;-) I hope i will receive a comment like that on my stuff!

I like the first one best!

The first is best, second - interesting!

Dear Samuel, You cite that "the projects are meant to be erased and crushed", from what perspective / position should this erasing and crushing take place? By you, the artist, the beholder or by the autonomous works (for example natural influences)? Second question, what is the use / content of the destruction process? As a curator and art historian I have to say that there as not so much original or actual about the work, was this your intention? See for example the show of Sergej Jensen at the KW institute for contemporary art. "Sergej Jensen uses linen, jute, colorful fabrics, used textiles, stretchers and frames as supports for his works. Yet, rather than being mere base matter, these materials inform the paintings’ content. Stains, holes, cracks and other traces of use become pictorial elements. Pigment, diamond dust, packthread, wool, bleach and other conditions are Jensen’s pictorial means. Longsome treatments—often over the course of several years—let the paintings emerge as if by themselves. It is being added and removed, concealed and disclosed. Visible traces become pictorial gestures, and pictorial gestures are made to seem like traces. Front sides reverse into back sides; bottoms flip into tops; right turns left. The image itself seems to determine the composition. Sergej Jensen’s painting is not mimetic as it does not attempt to picture anything. Rather, Sergej Jensen’s painting only represents itself. Sergej Jensen’s (born 1973) solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art will feature new works created in the last two years." www.kw-berlin.de Destruction processes, sometimes only meant to be formalistic, have been used overtime, by for example Tinguely, Joseph Beuys or the Wiener Aktionisten, but they mostly worked from a certain theoretical horizon. What did you use as a starting point? To make this works more actual I think you should turn away from this formalistic abstract expressionist style and work with more contemporary media and concepts. Good luck! Yours, Niek Lekkerkerk