FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS Roos van Haaften Roos van Haaften (The Netherlands, 1983) is an artist with a background in theatre, who moved into large charcoal drawings, and subsequently started to use light and shadow in instalation work: “Shadows as an absence of light has my special interest. I arrange objects that, when lit by theatre lights, form shadows or ‘drawings’ of different tones of grey on the wall. The work is fleeting and temporary, as soon as the lights are dimmed, the image dissapears and leaves an empty space.” She recently completed a research period at the Institute of Light Design in Amsterdam, where she focused on the subtle complexities of light to make forms and shapes, instead of shadow alone. Extract of “Findings on light’ (PARS foundation)
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Loop structure with tripod and panes | 2016 pc spots, mirrors, glass, wood, scourer 366 x 320 x 300 cm € 4.500
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Now lost now found | 2016 pc-‐spot, glass, ink, various materials size projection: 30 x 50 cm € 1.250
Now lost now found | 2016 Detail
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
1000 feet or taller wrapped up over night | 2016 pc-‐spot, glass, ink, flour, various materials size projection: 30 x 50 cm € 1.250
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Untitled | 2016 profile spot, glass, magnifier glass, paper size projection: 30 x 30 cm € 950
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Attempt to fly with a pin and a needle | 2015 pc-‐spot, glass, ink drawings, flour, various materials size projection: 30 x 50 cm € 1.250
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Attempt to fly with a pin and a needle | 2015 Detail views
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Light work with mirrors and glass | 2015 pc spots, overhead projector, mirrors, glass, water 574 x 350 x 300 cm € 3.200
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Light work with mirrors and glass | 2015 Detail
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Chimney smoke ties the roof to the sky | 2015 pc-‐spot, glass, ink drawings, flour, various materials size projection: 30 x 50 cm € 1.250
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
To leave the stage unseen | 2015 1 pc spot, overhead projector, paper, mirrors, tripod, ink drawings, water 240 x 170 x 180 cm € 2.150
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Untitled | 2015 2 pc spots, overhead projector, paper, mirrors, glass, tripod, charcoal drawings size approx: 600 x 300 x 500 cm € 2.800
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS
Untitled | 2014 15 profiles, paper, mirrors, tripods different levels of light do slightly alter, sequence of 3:00 minutes size approx: 300 x 400 x 350 cm € 2.800
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
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FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS Flying on the Light of A Pin / Through Chimney Smoke and Mirrors an essay by Charlie Citron about the work of Roos van Haaften While walking down the street, surrounded by the familiar architecture of the city, you notice small pieces of abandoned garbage, scattered discarded objects, a piece of plastic, a splinter of wood, a screw casting a shadow on the side walk, a cardboard box, sheets of paper and metal foil, a plastic top from fast food containers, supermarket packaging, a broken window or mirror, a continuum of insignificant glances. We take these observations to be simply what they are, everyday detritus, junk and fragments of a throwaway culture. But are these banal leftovers without a story? Weren’t they used for something by someone, manufactured from raw material, traded and shipped, consumed in the process of material transformation and recycling. Some objects end as landfill while others recycle to become new objects with new names. Planned obsolescence is part of the transient show to go of consumerism. A narrative of shopping signs and signals, things that sell and tell us about ourself on the shelf? Do we recognize the found object as a handmade, machine made, ready made or do they simply exist in the flickering abandoned media space of our imagination as something we know, a designed precept, the identity of a thing that conforms to form and function. But does form really follow function? Made objects are extensions of our body’s action and performativity, convenient and expressive tools to help us achieve our goals, but they are also something more. Visions of the imaginary in which image/art moves beyond material to express feelings, emotions and concepts. Roos van Haaften’s work explores what happens when found objects are recycled and reconstructed as image, metaphor or sign. A plastic bag becomes a geodesic dome and a nail the leg of a camera standing in a postindustrial landscape. The observed thing is no longer what it appears to be, not as an objet trouvé or surrealistic shift of image identity, but as a tool to draw with light. A vision of a parallel world, challenging the way you frame image and position things in space, a juxtaposed holographic universe in which the light source, the measurement of all things is rearranged and constructed. The position of the viewer is placed in an ambiguous situation, without a point of rest, some place in between the objects, shadows and atmosphere. This bordering world carries the weight and intensity of an emotionally charged afterimage. A perceptual frame that conceptually lifts you into an atmospheric mood, transforming your
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS assumptions. This conceptual shift begins with the act of seeing and collecting. It is this expressive potential through reorganizing our perception that makes van Haaften’s work so compelling. What does she see when she sees? How does she filter found objects as light images through her imagination to arrive at her compositions? “In Einsteins formulation of the special theory of relativity it was the field of light itself that determined the structure of space and time. Two-‐dimensional space is an illusion because all things have depth. Trying to conceive of an object with width and length without depth is very difficult with the exception of reflections and shadow. Leonard Shlain, Art and Physics, Parallel Histories in Space and Time, p.232 and 235” Roos van Haaften works with both permanent and impermanent materials to create temporary installations using light, shadow and discarded found objects. These sculptural installations are staged 3 dimensionally to create 2 dimensional projections. The temporality, its on-‐site and improvised quality, add to the compelling immediacy of her work. Her approach to finding objects, far from dumpster diving is spontaneous and precise. Van Haaften has an extraordinary vision, a dynamic way of seeing, finding, and manipulating both large and very small found objects to imagine their potential as a shadow in order to construct a sculptural bricolage. The process of drawing in 3 dimensions becomes an independent assemblage, measured and directed by the shadow, and then as projected B/W image. These assemblages become platform still-‐lives or maps laid out on the floor in the space. The staging becomes an independent arte de povera sculpture, as seen in her monumental work, Winter March In Smokey Areas on the roof of the city hall during the Amsterdam Light Festival in 2014. This sculptural graphic interplay as seen in her recent installations at Francis Boeske Projects, Nieuw Dakota, Arti et Amicitae, Bradwolff Projects and Huis Frankendael displays and explores the position of the found object as an abandoned construction to create a projected industrial landscape on the walls. The context of place is integrated into the concept of the drawing. In this sense they become site specific installations but more importantly they are three dimensional conceptual collages which incorporate recycled materials such as wood, glass, flour, sticks, plastic, light and tape. Their ephemeral quality is juxtaposed to the gravity and weight of the objects. The reflection becomes a conceptual place generated in an actual space. Sometimes an overhead projector is used to add
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS drawing elements with flour and sand scratched into negative contours on a piece of glass. The social meaning of this recycled signification is in the transparent transformation of the throw-‐away thing into an illusion, a pictorial commentary concerning industrial urbanization. The smoky chiaroscuro of the projected landscape has an apocalyptic foreboding and reminds us of the temporality of our industry, manufacturing and consumption contrasted as a frozen moment in time. In one of her recent installations entitled Light Work With Mirrors and Glass at Francis Boeske projects, van Haaften explored a multilayered post cubist interior space, enclosed by walls with a narrow passageway between, made from old glass plates, mirror fragments, an overhead projector and water droplets. This space had the affect to fragment into multiple perspectives at close range but open into a shifting post constructivist trompe l’œuil. The transparency of the geometry was supported by the positioning of the lamps from either direction and the interposing of glass plates and mirrors on the floor and against the wall. A state of suspension in both meaning and space was achieved as a non-‐Euclidean idea in which time and space blend and disconnect depending on the viewers point of view. In two smaller works entitled Attempt to Fly With A Pin And Needle and Chimney Smoke Ties The Roof To The Sky, a rectangle of glass is suspended perpendicular to the wall by light-‐weight nylon threads. The glass is powdered with flour and small sketchy lines as in sand drawings. Scattered throughout these micro landscapes are small pieces of garbage the size of a pin, a wooden match, a shard of glass or plastic bag. The light is projected from underneath casting a shadow in perfect rectangular proportion on the wall. The drawing becomes a topographical projection, the objects a sculptural still life. The viewing is an interplay between the actual still life and the light passing through it. The viewing becomes reflexive, the eye and mind trying to reconstruct image by tracking the artists positioning and choice of objects in the landscape to create a specific afterimage. The angle of view is dominated by the position of the light source and its reflection and shadow from the staged objects. This condition echoes the posing and use of lens historically in painting but in a very new way. Like artists such as William Kentridge, the past is echoed through images of a post apocalyptic future. Buckminster Fuller’s domes are projected from plastic rapping. Empty media screens for image advertisement, video cameras, water
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
FRANCIS BOESKE PROJECTS droplets echoing sound waves and satellite pulses refer to the foreboding relationship between technology, media, surveillance, information and landscape. A breakdown of nature and traditional ecologies dominated by dystopian dreams. Strangely it is in the process of seeing that we recognize renewal, the clever recreation of shadows as something else. A pin becomes a lamppost and a broken bottle a prismatic sky. van Haaften’s landscapes are moody, conceptual and emotional, their impermanence reinforcing the performance of seeing as action. The landscapes represent the fragility of our ecology, a social critique of our relationship with nature, media, industry and environment. Landscape and architecture as civilization become interdependent language, which can be destroyed and displaced. A lost world of abandoned, simulated hyperreality. It is important that van Haaften’s work is handmade. It deals with a physical, emotive space. Far from digital E-‐Motions and Express-‐ions, impermanence is expressed as a breakdown of the material world, an impression of space/time as light on our senses. The connection between observation, physical placement and sculptural space as light is a profound statement about time and perception. The digital is not seen as a seamless media solution but a reflection dependent on our awareness of ourselves as animals, entering and exiting in physical time and space. The landscapes pathways are timelines where idealism is challenged and disrupted by collapsed structures. Is this a view of the past, present and future misunderstandings of our ecological and social condition? Imagination is the 4th dimension. It is where perception, conception, reception, preception and deception combine. It is the place of seeing and making. Amsterdam Feb.1, 2016 Charlie Citron Charlie Citron is a sculptor, photographer and installation artist. He mentors and gives advice and workshops to visual artists.
ms. van riemsdijkweg 41A | 1033rc amsterdam | +31(0)20 612 7979
[email protected] | www.francisboeskeprojects.nl
