My practice is mainly built on conflicts between, on the one hand, meanings we agree upon, and, on the other hand, meanings we don't agree on, or how one thing can overlap with another. In my works I deliberately give way to transfigurations such as the latter. It is often by subtle gestures such as removing, adjusting and decontextualizing that I underscore the ambiguous and diffuse traits of a subject, many a time resulting in new narratives and meanings that revolve around multiplicity, liminality and fluidity. This is often done through poetic rearrangements of the different forces at work, taking into account art historical, connotational, literary, referential, but also personal contexts.
Everybody becoming everybody else (Isabel’s clothes and Rabin’s smell), 2020, Everybody becoming everybody else (Rabin’s clothes and Manus’ smell), 2020, Everybody becoming everybody else (Manus’ clothes and Louise’s smell), 2020, Everybody becoming everybody else (Louise’s clothes and Bernadette’s smell), 2020 - A number of evenly folded stacks of clothing, each stack equal in size to the other, is ranged along a single line on the floor. They are complete outfits, the extension of specific individuals. The clothing on each pile belong to a specific person, but the scent belongs to another, whose clothing has been stacked elsewhere. Within the carefully arranged clothing, there are overlapping identities.
Photo by Luuk Smits
De misgrijpers, 2019 - At a certain point in the history of the Martinusschool in Weert, the Netherlands, a series of handrail corrections were installed in the stairwell and from that moment on rescripted certain movements that were at some point present in the architecture. Wandering around this building would have been seemingly different before and after the placement of the rail extension. In this work the architectural correction is disabled by lowering it back to the height of the original rail in an attempt to invoke the spirit of lost movements back into the building. One section of a nine-part stained glass window present in the stairwell—depicting the tip of Saint Martin’s saber cleaving his cloak held by three fingers—was reproduced as an invitation card.
☁, 2018-2021 - Not a title consisting of words or a sentence defines this hyperrealistic sculpture of a common adder (vipera berus) but rather one that consists of an image. Just as a normal title this image is embedded in the hand-out or catalog of the exhibition in question. Instead of the title being used to read the physical work, this work rather redefines a relationship between language and image as this photograph of a weather phenomenon in the Engadin valley in Switzerland called the Maloja snake owes its name to the small but poisonous animal. Ultimately, language is withdrawn from the work altogether.
Gladstrijken, 2020 - Three chairs, a pair of shoes, the left shoe in one place and the right one in another place, the dust from the room, the curtains and the lights, everything in the room has been rearranged. The installation is reminiscent of how things would be stored away rather than how they would be exhibited. Museums and galleries begin with an empty space before installing the exhibition in question, but galerie Gallery is foremost a furnished living room. Here, the first actions regarding the exhibitions are removing, hiding, concealing and keeping secret as the furniture is stored away in order to properly display the artworks. Not what is added or removed but how. Therein lies a signature hidden in the exhibitions at galerie Gallery.
Participating in the exhibition as Raniero, 2018 - As the reification of a diffused personality into halves as described in the captions of the piece: ‘’As if I had now become one person divided over two names,’’ the name Raniero, the Italian translation of Reinier, was announced on all communication regarding the exhibition such as invitations, flyers, advertisements, posters and window lettering situating the work in and outside of the exhibition.
A translation between words starting at opposite ends of the alphabet, 2018-ongoing - Every word consists of two parts: a meaning which we all agree upon on the one hand and an emotional value on the other. In translation, the meaning remains the same, but its connotations change and thus get removed from its meaning. This distance is made visible in the work in series A translation between words starting at opposite ends of the alphabet (2018-ongoing). In an existing text a word that starts with the letter a is translated to a word beginning with the letter z. “Accessible” becomes “zugänglich” in German. “Almost” becomes “zamalo” in Croatian. “Alluding” becomes “zinspelen” in Dutch. These subtle interventions give shape to the space that exists between the interpretation and connotation of the words we exchange.
Te lezen vallen, Bas Jan Ader’s marks in ‘The Boy Who Plunged Over Niagara’ (Lawrence Elliott, 1962), 2019 - At first glance these three photocopies seem mostly blanc. However, a bunch of hand-written X’s are spread over the page and are reminiscent of a musical score. These marks were made by Bas Jan Ader in The Boy Who Plunged Over Niagara, a story written by Lawrence Elliott first published in Reader’s Digest in 1962. As a performance, Ader recited this story and drank from his glass of water on every mark. The removing of the text itself leaves the marks in limbo, no longer marking, and situated between language and image as they can be read but also viewed. Reading, being a downward, almost falling movement and viewing, being weightless and directionless allude to Bas Jan’s oeuvre.
Axeman Jacob unwizardly trips over the knee-high sequoia, 2020 - This artist book proposes a new alphabet for Lawrence Weiner is an F. At least according to a website widely used by graphic designers to identify typefaces and font families. This artist book comes in an edition of 25 (+5 A.P.), not separately numbered but separately titled. A pangrammatic title—containing every letter of the alphabet at least once—was written for each cover but your alphabet’s sixth letter is absent.
Titles:
1. Vexed bedstraw quit, just ceazed, simply walks echoing.
2. Maqui eaux, go and (in a haze) slip wavey Budrick’s turned jaw.
3. Blue jay struts qi, pecks imago in waxed avize, ha!
4. In Bohemia, wry italics zing past very xeroxed inkjet quarters.
5. Why joke and question big peculiar wuxia movie quiz?
6. No prize, just lost my exuviae to cubed hawks in a quag.
7. Quetzal ‘twixt bygone entourage hijacks vamoosed spirit.
8. Was it the punk-jazz dromedary or the equally extravagant bactrian sporting a single hump?
9. Unimaginably quick jade xyster, he vows to zigzag wickyups.
10. In a sphynx bivouac you heard a weak jug zip without a qualm.
11. Ojime zebra, exotic thing, piqué (not argyle) woven, so no stripes, kid.
12. ”Sizy bathtub vessel makes a quiet taxi, junior pa,” we coughed.
13. Quasi law is very epoxy, chimpanzee doesn’t budge: lockjawed.
14. He leaves the polyzoic room, jagged by equinox, with a babka.
15. Six wrong themes rive a cazique myth, paiked bijou-like.
16. Exceptive azuki allowed through, or bent around my quiet juices.
17. Muting xylophone quote to zap jars and uvea back, how?
18. Quaky ibex jogs velvety cowhage in azure opposite daytime.
19. Juvie banqueter said in a tizzy: ”Get the alexipharmakon, sowce me!”
20. Skywritten query above (silhouetted) or perhaps crux or gauje below (melanized).
21. Zero vapid xemes—those skyjacking Sabine’s gulls—quench sweltering thirst.
22. Axeman Jacob unwizardly trips over knee-high sequoia.
23. In Qazax, Azerbaijan, work-in-progress is very light, bejuco made.
24. Majolicaware qobyz broke string but virus X spared no horse.
25. One extra white horse and a more black equiv japingly dovetail into zebra.
Cropped exhibition posters, 2019 - The exhibition posters resting in the designated vitrines have been cropped and no longer fit their frames. A portion of each vitrine is left empty. This new cut-out brings about a new composition and most importantly a new center. No longer are the geometrical shapes that suggest the letter A at the heart of the poster’s design but rather the suggestion itself hidden in the negative space. As the information regarding the exhibition disappears along with the strip of paper, the posters now only advertise themselves.
I never meant to kill David Bowie. About a week after his death I came to realise that I had stolen a part of him by using one of his song-titles in a work of art. It was only an accident. (Where are we now?—The great gig in the sky), 2016 - A tissue in a plexiglass vitrine mounted onto the wall is blotted with pink lipstick. This piece is a replica of a tissue that was on display in the travelling exhibition David Bowie Is. The work is a play on the appropriation of persona and can be read as an attempt to restore the popstar’s stolen identity as alluded to in the title: ‘’..I came to realise that I had stolen a part of him by using one of his song-titles in a work of art. It was only an accident.’’
