Studio visions

Shortly after corona measures were announced and public life more or less came to a halt, visual artist Christine Saalfeld initiated online art lectures. After all, the art academies were closed and art education had been moved to online platforms.

Teachers of art education needed to reinvent art lessons and take steps towards a digital transformation. These lesson films can also be viewed as portraits of visual artists.

Christine Saalfeld gives drawing lessons at the St. Joost academy in Den Bosch. In support of her classes, she was previously looking for suitable teaching materials on topics such as the effect of colors on each other, composition, signature / style, light and shadow, imagining people, portrait, perspective and the sources of inspiration of artists. All information in itself is of course already available on the Internet, but it is usually too school and without an artistic vision.

In order to be able to convey this artistic angle, Saalfeld initiated this project. The lessons can be viewed by everyone.

CBK Rotterdam contributed to this project for the fees for the participating Rotterdam artists in the various films.

Hillegon Brunt

Karin de Young

Rod Gubbels

Axel Schmidt

Kamiel Verschuren

Kim Hosper

Jörg Besser

Jörg Besser (born 1967 in Glauchau (DDR)), studied visual arts at the Academy in Munich from 2003 to 2010. Jörg Besser teaches figurative drawing at the TUM and the AdBK in Munich. He lives and works in Munich and Chemnitz.

joergbesser.com/zeichenunterricht
instagram.com/yorkbesser

Joris Kuipers: Exuberant and free

Face to face with a wall relief or installation by Joris Kuipers, you are about to enter another dimension. One where the chaos and arbitrariness of life are exorcised and carefully arranged into an exuberant, lyrical object full of beauty. Intersections of the imagination, hand-drawn and shaped with a laser, converge in opulent abstraction visions that expand effortlessly in the surrounding space. Bulging clouds, minerals and blooming flowers reflect the vitality of nature and our own capacity for pleasure.

After the first colorful impressions, Kuipers' work unfolds in ever finer details. The unique, vibrant surface of each individual element immediately draws your attention and amazes with the subtle contrasts and countless shades of a bold yet harmonious palette. Gold, fluorescent orange and burnt Sienna, or infinite shades of pink, yellow, pair, orange and red. Transitions and organic patterns - cell structures, fungi, rust, raindrops - seem to flow autonomously and unhindered through all works, revealing a careless painterly control behind the spontaneous splendor of color. Layer by layer, Kuipers creates depth and reflection that entices and directs the eye.

Yet not everything is equally beautiful in paradise, no matter how brightly colored and lively the works are. Recent wall reliefs strongly reminiscent of flowers also refer to decay, to a struggle for light, to proliferating, spiky plants. Kuipers does not close his eyes to the frayed edges, the vulnerabilities and temporality of our existence. He simply accepts the shadows, as part of an aesthetic habitat where dark tones serve to bring out the highlights and dazzling whites emphasize the rich colors behind them.

Within each work, the individually cut shapes are part of an ingenious spatial composition that suggests movement in all directions. The most dynamic are the large installations that dance through the room and immerse the viewer in a dizzying swirl of shapes that float up or down, whirl around or suddenly change direction. To be clear: they don't really move, it is the energy and rhythm that Kuipers gives them, the broad, compelling gestures that consist of countless small decisions and careful considerations about relative sizes, colors, angles and positions.

There is of course a certain tension between the degree of control, the weighing and weighing that is required to make the reliefs and installations on the one hand - the long process of testing, adjusting, loosening, replacing, updating and replacing - and the special feeling of unplanned growth that works evoke on the other hand. It is partly due to Kuipers' playfulness, his pleasure in discovering and the sense of wonder that is tangible in his oeuvre. And the work itself disappears in an inimitable way while it welcomes you; it becomes an experience of connectedness to the world, even though you are momentarily unaware of what is happening around you.