This installation is made of 25 compositions on cardboard boxes, made between 2020 and 2022. The method of making and the ingredients are the same. The outcome is very different and variable. It made me think of the human D.N.A. How we all are made of the same but differ so much from each other.
In this work I realized a new composition existing out of individual pieces which are combined together to create a new image. The frame is made of old left-over pieces of wood and combined with new parts.
The frame that is holding the 3 boxes and 1 little one is constructed to accommodate the composition boxes, which are commutable, because you can simply pull them out and change them for another and make your own combination. The shape and design are inspired on fruit and vegetables baskets as you see them presented in markets or grocery stores.
I wanted to emphasize the heritage of the painted boxes which are made of packaging materials coming from the world of consuming.
I started this work out of a unrecognasible stain, because of the first painting, which kept coming through, despite off layers of gesso and decided to let it be a starting point for this painting. The shape of an imaginary piece of exotic fruit came to mind. It became somewhat the root of this composition in which I felt it wanted to be flowing and organic. In this painting, paint is combined with collage and drawing, when you look close you can see it containes beads, ripped off cardboard and wooden parts. This work was send to an open call competition for the foundation villa Seurat in Paris. The competition had the theme ‘nature reasserts itself’
This second work, was made as a second part of the previous posted work titled; Lockdown part 1. It was originated during the semi lockdown in the fall of last year and has parallels with the situation in which it was created. It felt two sided, just like the pandemic in which we were set back from our daily life. The basics for the work were set by the first work and therefore it seemed easy to make another work. But just als the second period of lockdown it felt extra tough to maintain the concentration in the work and the need to be created. Although confusion and asking questions about creating work is not easy but at the end always good for making decisions.
This work received an honorable mention from galerie Biesenbach in Cologne during one of the ‘Open Calls’ for their online ‘Art Matters 2’ exhibition.
These pictures were shot on location, during filming my artworks for the short video ‘Lost in pandemie’ which you can see in the previous blog. Personally, I like the pictures so much that I wanted to show them in a solo blog. Just for the esthetics of the photo’s. To me they both capture the feeling of totally left and lost in a setting and on the other hand, they seems to immerse naturally in the environment of streets, concrete, building waste and other decors of outside settings. Pictures taken in may 2020.
A year ago from now this work was selected for a new art project in Otterlo, called galerie2020. Each month a different work is on display from a different artist. 12 months, 12 artists. For me the honour to do the the kick-off on 31 december 2019 to be the first on display during the month of January 2020. The vitrine galerie project is curated by Marian Mijnhardt and can be followed on http://www.galerie2020.nl
During the month of January 2020 several visitors came by to look at my work.
‘The Gift’ is a landscape mostly made of wood in combination with a piece of lost driftwoord which I found on the Lido in Venice, some years earlier. A picture I took in the national park The Everglades in Florida USA inspired me and was the starting point for this composition. Other materials I used are eco-line, acryl-paint and lacquer, green tule and an old coaster to make this composition. To me it represents the reminiscence of different places that you visit during traveling and about making connections between those very different parts of the world. It is about dreaming a world and how you can make your own interpretation of a composed world and reality you have actually seen. In this case a travel to Venice and Florida ended up in a landscape with a more Asian feel to it. To me that is ‘The Gift’
Later that year the work was sold and has found a new home where it is appreciated very much.
Two new works. I started to pick up left over pieces op paper, which were partley on the floor, combining them with other paper related materials. it became a collage with layering, cutting away parts I didn’t like. Adding paint or cut-out parts of packaging, left-over parts of wooden sticks, a shopping bag from Salisbury, sandpaper, cardboard shoe mold. Sometimes i even made up stuff which look like they belong in the image. To me it’s controlled chaos, in the end its harmony, but still with a rhythm….
These works were exhibited at my end expo in Loods6 Amsterdam of the NAU (Nieuwe Akademie Utrecht) in juli last year. It was a selection of works I made in the last couple of months before the expo. NAU is an art course I followed for 5 years together with 10 other artists we graduated, started with somewhat 35 starters in the first year. But with a lot of hard work, persistence, searching, studying and defining your subject and having the joy of wanting to create art it has been as much as a trigger point to let go what i already knew as a starting point for me to develop my work for the future.
Installation with sculptures from serie 2, cardboard boxes in acryl lacquer.
August Robin Peters. June 2019
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