The Play of Emotion and Fantasy E-Book

Krijgsman Willem

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 69

Beschreibung

The Play of Emotion and Fantasy is the book about the arts of the in Finland living Dutch Visual Artist and Interior Architect Willem Krijgsman (born in 1953, Delft). The book contains a large collection of his early artworks. In the form of two separate, interesting interviews, he takes the reader with him by showing his works through many fantastic colour photos and pictures. He explains his process of creation and artistic developments. He is showing us, how he goes from paper collages to assemblages, from assemblages via junk art into drawing, followed by his later discovery of clay, that developed into love for modelling clay. In this rich, with photographs and drawings, illustrated book Krijgsman shows his love for the arts in general. Making art, by discovering and researching art forms, is his most important motivation. He wants, that his book of arts is working as if being in an exhibition situation. The reader can go through different stages of his artistic creations. Explanations and names under the pictures, if so, are kept to a minimum, not to disturb the viewer’s own interpretation. The artist, living in Finland since 1981, has held many solo exhibitions in his home country, especially in Helsinki and Vantaa. He has also taken part in many group exhibitions and gained publicity. Though not internationally known, his wonderful artworks are very much on the level and worthwhile exploring. They show a really motivated, talented and sincere visual artist at work. Willem Krijgsman has published in Finnish, in 2023, the book “Fifty-Fifty” (BoD, ISBN: 978-952-80-9321-3) telling his integration process into the Finnish society via intertextual collages using e.g. paintings from Golden Age of Finnish Art.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Interview

Interview by Lesly Trash

Assemblages and paper collages

part one

Works in pictures

Paper collages

Interview

Interview by Lesly Trash

Small objects and drawings

part two

Works in pictures

Small objects and drawings

Interview

Interview by Art Clay

Modelling clay and drawing

Works in pictures

Echoes 2005-2008 and drawings

Exhibition of Echoes

Gallery AARNI Exhibition by three artists Espoo / Finland 2008

Works in pictures

Echoes 2008-2010

Exhibition of Echoes

Gallery Duetto Solo Exhibition Helsinki / Finland 2009

The Requiem Choir

Gallery Duetto 2009

Model of the exhibition in Gallery Duetto

Working with a model, 1:20 scaled

Works in pictures

Ballads 2011-2012

Works in

pictures

Closeups 2012-2015

INTERMEZZO My love for the work of Auguste Rodin

Drawings and one torso

Works in pictures

Continuing of Closeups

Works in pictures

Closeups Wall sculptures on canvas

Exhibition of Ballads and Closeups and three colour paintings

Gallery K Mezzo space Vantaa / Finland 2016

Model of Gallery K

Working with a model, 1:20 scaled

BIOGRAPHY

EXHIBITION LIST

VISUAL ARTISTS MENTIONED IN BOOK

ASSEMBLAGES AND PAPER COLLAGES

AN INTERVIEW by Lesley Trash

part one

An interview with Willem Krijgsman by Lesley Trash

The Play of Emotion and Fantasy

The first time I came in contact with the art of the Visual Artist Willem Krijgsman, living in Finland, was on the website of the Artists’ Association of Finland. I am an art historian and a senior editor of the English art magazine Behind Art. We are searching worldwide for interesting art and the story behind the art. If we find something very interesting, we try to contact the artist and ask if he or she is willing to cooperate with us. We offer an interview and a review of the artist’s art in text and pictures in our magazine.

Back to Willem Krijgsman’s art. On his website pages of the Artists’ Association, he was showing a large collection of small objects made out of all kinds of items like: kitsch, junk, toys and waste. We immediately were interested, because these objects were so full of humour and fantasy. We agreed to make an interview with him at his atelier in the centre of Helsinki. It was a very interesting meeting, in which Willem was showing many more objects and interesting stories behind them. There were also funny and dramatic drawings from the objects he had made and a very exciting large collection of collages made out of torn magazines. Besides, his workspace was full of ‘colour pencil paintings’, as he called them, intertextual collages, he explained. But here is the interview in its full length.

LT: is Lesley Trash

WK: is Willem Krijgsman

LT: Your atelier is full of wonderful, different types of art: I see sculptural objects, paper collages, trash sculptures or assemblages, bas-reliefs, colour pencil drawings etc. Are you in a way searching for an artistic direction?

WK: Thank you for appreciating my art, Miss Trash.

LT: Yes, I really do and, please, call me Less.

WK: Yes, you can say, I explore many ways of making art. Or in my art there has been many different forms of expressions. You can find drawings, oil paintings, sculptures in low or high relief and objects. In the middle of the eighties, I was making abstract drawings with oil crayons in primitive way. I was also making collages out of torn magazines and forming relief sculptures and bigger objects out of trash, that I found anywhere. Later on, I created smaller objects out of junk, toys and kitsch. In the nineties my collage art, as I call it, became more connected with drawing and later on I concentrated mainly on drawing. I was referring more and more to the history of art, by that, expressing feelings and emotions in dramatic, melodramatic or humorous ways. You find that also in my assemblages and objects.

Now, in the beginning of 2000, I am drawing intertextual collages using Finish and Dutch, so called Golden Age paintings, in which I show my integration process into the Finish society.

Back to your question, I am just exploring different ways of making art. During some period, I’m involved in one medium and then it develops into a new one. For me, making art is like a journey through different types of art forms. All the different art forms, I have used, are serious periods of expression and they develop on into a new direction. In that way, I have been developing as a visual artist. I do not search consciously for an artistic direction. But maybe it is unconsciously searching for the right medium, with which I express myself the best.

LT: Why did you stop making abstract art?

WK: Well, I really liked making abstract art, but at the end, it felt like doing decorative art. Only the colours, lines and structures of the composition made it work. It was a bit like making interior design. I felt, that I wanted to create stories with my works, not only decorations. So, I just started to do something different by making paper collages, tearing interesting parts out of magazines. From these torn pieces I made pictures by gluing them in certain ways on paper. Before I noticed, they started looking like three-dimensional objects. The paper collages activated my fantasy and I imagined funny names. I really enjoyed doing it.

LT: What about your assemblages?

WK: Assemblages I had made already before I knew, what I was doing. As a young kid, I was making objects out of things people threw away. I was growing up in the fifties and sixties in the very cultural town of Delft. Between my home street and the next street, there was a piece of old farmer land. We children used to play there. People were throwing all kinds of small trash on the land. I collected items from the trash and with my fantasy I made funny objects out of them. At home we had a coal stove and we used wood to get it on. My father made small firewood for that purpose, and I was collecting pieces of wood and blocks from that heap. From these pieces I was building fantasy-houses, castles and whatever buildings. I didn’t need Lego. So, as quite young, I was making already collages.

LT: Did you have any support or were you influenced by somebody then?

WK: No, I don’t think so. I was the youngest in the working-class family of six children. My parents were always busy with their own tasks, my father with his work and my mother with her householding. My three sisters and two brothers were far too old for playing with me. They were concentrating on their own things. My youngest sister was seven years older than me and youngest brother thirteen years older. So quite an age difference, also, with all other relatives. It created a natural distance between me and them all, a kind of space. That gave me peace and freedom. Because I was often playing alone at home, I could develop my fantasy world. Besides, I am a loner by heart, shy and not very socially focused. I do well on my own.

LT: How did you choose certain items?

WK: As a young boy I was especially interested in technical items, like for example parts of bicycles or small machine parts. It was a bit like playing with a Meccano box. Do you know Meccano?

LT: Yes, my older brother used to have a box of Meccano and I was sometimes secretly playing with it. I was always more interested in his toys than mine.

WK: Who was singing ‘Girls will be boys and boys will be girls…’? Anyway, I remember, that my earliest assemblages had boyish symbols.

LT: The Kinks in Lola, isn’t it? What do you mean by boyish symbols?

WK: I could build, for example, a fantastic sword, that gave me a feeling of power or a magical robot, that somehow protected me. These kinds of symbols, I mean.

LT: Did you make also later assemblages in the same way, symbolically?

Catman, 1990

Household, 1990

Water-Knight, 1990

Reconstruction, 1990

Ole, Toreador! 1990

Connected, 1990

WK: