Trends and Déja Vus

More than a thousand objects, thoughts, ideas, techniques, viewpoints and materials passed my retina during Art (in) Amsterdam. With this first post#AA11 post I’ll be a bit superficial in mentioning recurring themes, presentations and techniques.

Lightpaintings and moving paintings – actually they were respectively lightboxes or animations shown on monitors, mounted on the wall like a conventional framed piece. Sometimes very beautiful and mesmerizing like those of Eelco Brand (1, 2, 3) or plainly eyecatching like those of Davor Sanvincenti and Atladóttir & D‘Ors. Others were maybe not more than just another nice decorative lightsource, soon the be seen in rip-offs at Xenos or IKEA. (If you can’t wait, there’s always the exotic household store around the corner which sell lightbox waterfalls)

This brings me to the second theme: IKEA. As a fair of things to obtain for an exterior or interior, Art Amsterdam was at times the high-budget version of the (mural) decoration department of the Swedish mammoth. Because a piece is only crafted a bit more ‘authentic‘ than its massproduced colleagues it doesn’t mean it is more than just another lighting armature with a twist. Just like Jeroen Henneman’s beautiful piece Hollandse horizon; intricate craftsmanship and uniqueness render its value and set it apart, not merely so the idea itself. Paul Nassenstein recognized the objectoriënted mindset this phenomenon plugs into; a lot to see and absorb in his work IKEA.

Then there were some pyromaniacs going around. Two in one gallery (Markus Willeke and Raquel Maulwurf) and a small essay in a whole muralinstallation of Markus Putze.

What haunted me on the other hand, were paper cuts. I’ve seen the master already years ago, in Vogue, so for me it was just a nice chance to see Georgia Russell from up close. A nice follower in this technique is Lidy Jacobs. For Elena Beelaarts paper cutting is just one of the techniques used in her installations, others showed their one trick off like Annette van der Pals.