‘Never a day without lines’ is a series of exhibitions that takes place in three editions. The point of departure: ‘the drawing’ in its purest form, and with connotative aspect that is intrinsic to autonomous art. De Ketelfactory has invited three artists whose work focuses on the drawing. From early January through early July 2010, works by various visual artists will be shown in three editions. The content, ‘the story’ that the artist wants to tell, is crucial to the shape that the drawing takes and determines what material is used in it. Within the visual arts, the drawing is actually the most ‘vulnerable’ material form that an artist can employ. Here it is not possible for the artist to ‘hide’ behind an impressive and aesthetic use of material. A single line must give shape to a mental picture. The drawing develops, consciously or unconsciously, from an idea or an inner world and then crystallizes on a support, such as paper, canvas or a wall.
Roland Sohier meets Harm Hajonides and Robbie Cornelissen in an exhibition where each allows an interrelationship of the various stances adopted in the drawings to develop. The wish to arrive at a lively chemistry among the exhibited works causes the artists to employ seemingly antithetical elements (e.g. illusion and tangibility, fiction and reality, the two-dimensional and three-dimensional) and to play them off against each other in this investigative presentation.
Roland Sohier
Roland Sohier makes figurative drawings that shed light on ‘the human condition’. Appearing in his works are men and women of flesh and blood, but there is also room for clowns, gnomes and giants. The use of such (fairytale) figures gives Sohier the opportunity to approach reality from an oblique angle. The use of humor and a touch of irony bring a certain lightness to the sometimes weighty themes.
Robbie Cornelissen
‘Every space that Cornelissen draws assumes a shape, a personality,’ says Alex de Vries about the work of Robbie Cornelissen. ‘We’re faced not with an inanimate structure, but with a living organism. What emerges in that is what we ourselves project onto it. This silent film is brought to life by the viewer.’ At De Ketelfactory Robbie Cornelissen is showing spatial drawings, such as his immense ‘Waiting Room’—a ‘live-in’ drawing where time has come to a halt in graphite, a stopping place along one’s journey. Aside from this, a series of recent smaller works and sketches are on view.
Harm Hajonides
‘The drawing should not want to win,’ says Harm Hajonides. ‘The drawing must dare to lose. The drawing does not exist in order to convince the viewer of its right to exist. Drawings should, at some moments, be rapt and jubilant, shout for joy; and at others, within the same work, they should be able to collapse and become helplessly monomaniacal with scrawlings and monotonous scribbles that dull the point of the pencil. They might ramble or turn gruff from boredom. Within a drawing the careless things are not glossed over for the sake of a solid product. There is, after all, no such thing.’ Harm Hajonides shows new drawings and texts at De Ketelfactory.
distillation ‘The things you experience’
Date: 25 April 2010
In collaboration with: Gerben Schermer, Jos ten Berge and Gert van Dusseldorp
Gerben Schermer about drawing and paper
Gerben Schermer, director of the Holland Animation Festival, talks of his love for the drawing and the paper. He also shows a personal film selection.
Jos ten Berge about ‘lines‘
Art historic Jos ten Berge addresses the question of what lines can do with the artists and the viewer. Where Paul Klee remarked how drawing was like ‘taking lines for a walk’, it turns out lines can sometimes take the artist for a walk. Could there be more between pen and paper than ink alone? Do the lines have a will of their own?
Gert van Dusseldorp about order and chaos
People continuously balance the line between boundaries and boundlessness, logic and inspiration, order and chaos. In other words: between the Apollinic and the Dionysian. Imaging therapist Gert van Dusseldorp approaches the separating and connecting line from the point of view of imaging therapy and psychiatry.
video portrait
publication (in Dutch)
From the essay by Alex de Vries: “Hajonides, Cornelissen and Sohier as a triumvirate, stand for a development in the art of drawing that surpasses its discipline. We see sculpture, architecture and painting united in a form of expression so direct and personal, that it renders any attempt at resistance futile. Artistry in their drawings is reduced to its essence: handwriting and the power of imagination. It is cutting edge drawing. They are continuously en garde.”
order