Jaap de Vries's Profile

From: Netherlands
Joined: February 02, 2008
www.jaapdevries.eu

About jvries:

Ever since my graduation in 1983, my work has centred on juxtaposing a world controlled by prohibitions and another, more sacral world: the world of play. Recurring themes include: ‘the unity of the sacred’, ‘the erotic’ and ‘the aesthetic’.
The basis of my work is painting and water-colouring. I also make films, photographs and sculptures. I am motivated by my experience ‘that the world in which I live does not tally with my desires’.
Art, I believe, enables me to create the space that allows those desires to come alive that in the world around me are subordinate or hidden. I like to experiment with different materials: paint, ink, rubber, photo/paper, purfoam, aluminium etc. I usually work on the standing format 200 x 150 cm. I have developed my own techniques, which involves working on paper and aluminium, with acrylics, cutting up shapes, and subsequently 'sticking' them back on the base with paint...
I use watercolours to create imperfect portraits, in which the mutilation is a metaphor for genuine experience. The watercolour shows that it is the paint itself that makes the wounds; the blood-flowing paint apparently has the capacity to do the same as real cutting. A face evidently still has the power to speak and to torment us with the question what experience it is hiding from us, and apparently the paint itself (and not the representation) is enough to convey this power. Unlike the moving images of a film, art (painting) allows us to experience the unreal as unreal and thereby creates an intimacy and rapport with our desires, in an atmosphere that allows us to become conscious of ourselves and our desires!
Jaap de Vries, 2008