In "Define the Line" a selection of five artists with an interesting variety in backgrounds are brought together into one space. These artists all have evident traces of very skilled illustrational qualities expressed in different media forms. They use strong lines to underline, outline or even animate their work. The illustrational quality of each artist becomes an element that functions as a building block serving a greater concept. All five express their own unique forms as output. This output can no longer be called just a drawing. Their lines have emerged into the realm of story boards, they can be paintings, or even objects.
Joost Bakker
In the work of Joost Bakker anything from little curiosities to major existential questions are being visualized. His images are often strange, but despite their strangeness the drawings and animations have a credibility about them. A typical example is 'Stadion Inverso' (Inverted stadium) : where the stands rise, from the ground up to the playing field at the top. The audience is forced to look into the landscape, away from the game. The stadium gets a sacral character reminiscent of the Pyramids and the Mayan temples.
In Define the Line Joost Bakker will present his newest animation work consisting of an audio visual installation about an infinite descent or endless free fall. The "free fall" installation will be presented along side a selection from his seemingly also endless torrent of drawings, where the edge of the paper itself becomes the subject.
Rachel de Boer
Multi media artists Rachel de Boer already began to show live video during her studies in Amsterdam being very active in a VJ collective. After graduating at the Rijksakademie, she presented herself as solo VJ under the name "Floating Media", and developed her style further to artistically support music venues, theatre performances or projects in public space. Her graffiti like outlined figures and interiors have acclaimed international success in for example Austria, Germany and the U.S.A.. De Boer lived in Berlin for several years and has returned to Amsterdam in the year 2000.
Apart from her technically challenging video works and installations she has maintained a production of sculptural works and works on paper or canvas. In Define the Line we are very pleased to present her most recent works on canvas.
Cathelijn van Goor
Cathelijn van Goor lives and works in Amsterdam, where she creates her large-scale drawings and paintings. Her latest works present futuristic images blurring the boundary between the figurative and the abstract. Van Goor is inspired by places where human bodies become traffic. She gathers slow shutter speed footage at the metro station for example, being most interested in the seconds after the doors of an arriving train have opened . She analyzes visually how people move through passing time. When she focuses on the individual figures, time appears to be finite. However, when the focus is shifted to the stream of passing figures, the individuals dissolve, an atmosphere of eternity is being created.
Both paintings and drawings by Cathelijn van Goor will be included in Define the Line.
Chiel Janssen
After found images from daily printed media, Chiel Janssen is using a reduction process involving manual duplication, enlargement, omitted detail and emphasized contrast. This way he transforms his subjects through many stages into series of subtle line drawings.
The subjects shown in his drawings can be of a sweet and adorable origin, sometimes erotic, or just as well depict a very macabre event such as the twisted steel left over after a fatal road accident or the explosion of a car bomb. In Define the Line we will present Chiel Janssen's most recent drawings.
Torsten Ruehle
Torsten Ruehle, born in Dresden, now lives and works in Berlin. He is a true painter with a graffiti art background. As painter he is busy changing the world: He takes high-energy, video stills or photographs and makes light, surreal arrangements of the atmospheric pictures by reorienting, modifying and adding to them. A collage of visual quotes are being merged onto his canvas. The images are strong in appearance, they stand out as primary black lines on a light surface. Torsten sometimes uses more colors, when these are added to the primary image, in transparent layers, maybe softly emphasized with thinner lines, they extend a black and white universe further inward and outward.
The artist mentioned during a studio visit, If the lines are interpreted as rhythm, and the colors as melody, one could understand how these paintings groove. In Define the Line we will show a selection of works from the "stereochrom" series where the use of color is almost only visible as grey tones.