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Poetics of repetition, 2023-2024
oil paint and oil pastel on paper 222 x 120 cm
In this project, I explore how the repetition of images not only affects the perception process but also invites the viewer to look at them in a different way each time. By repeatedly applying a variety of color and form compositions – similar but different – I play with the changing experience and meaning within the image.
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Merleau-Ponty, The world of perception
Repetition creates the suggestion of movement, like the eye moves over the repeated frames. The frames are alike but different. Not a re-living of the past, but a continual new discovery.
at first glance, it appears to be a cohesive image of fragments forming a whole. However, the left and right parts of the drawing are, in scientific terms, relatively of significantly smaller scale than the middle section, both in terms of the paper and the size of the children. This idea stems from the experience that when you look directly at an object in your field of vision, it seems larger than when it is in your peripheral view. In this work, I capture this objective experience of perception in relation to our subjective experience of time and space, and how these can distort when we become more attentive, curious, or emotionally engaged with a particular subject.
How the world appears to us as we move through it physically.
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Poetics of Repetition and the Body is a research project that explores ways to actively engage the viewer in the process of perceiving and discovering.
When our gaze glides over an object, we construct a sequence of angles, pieces, and fragments.
This happens because our body moves through space while we look, but also because our surroundings are constantly changing (due to light, weather conditions, and the movement of other people or objects).
I seek ways that correspond to these successive snapshots and free visual impressions.
How does movement and the position of the body contribute to the experience of an image and its frame?
It is an attempt to actively engage the viewer and to capture and reproduce the process of perception and discovery before the viewers eyes
Freedom, Johanthan Franzen
What is an image?
when looking at an image
what we see is a fragment
but a fragment of what?
we need to move
to be able to see differently.
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Although repetition may seem uniform, it never means exactly the same in our inner lives. In this project, I repeat forms and compositions, but I consciously experiment with variations in color, shape, brushstrokes, material, and scale. These subtle changes in repetition symbolize how repetition both distorts and renews. It compels us to look differently at what we already know.​
Poetics of space
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The images on the left are memories of two different places: beach houses in the Netherlands and an isolated village on a mountain above the clouds in Georgia.
These experiments result in images where spatial areas are separated by the size and the time it takes to shift our gaze from one place to another, allowing our experience of the image to unfold over time. It is a space that resonates with how we, as visitors, move through, observe, and discover a new place.
Through repetition, difference can emerge, as each repetition occurs in a unique place and time, always influenced by what came before. Every repetition is an invitation to reinterpret.
colored pencil, oil pastel and charcoal on paper,
all drawings 15 x 21 cm
Walking round in circles at Wertheimpark
I found myself drifting.. wandering around in Wertheim Park
I saw a bird in the bushes,
eating a red berry,
and a second later shitting it out. The bird flew away.
At that moment I thought that if I passed by a few seconds earlier or later I wouldn’t have seen the bird,
and I might have not seen the bush.
After walking a long a bit I noticed that the road of the park took the shape of a circle and thought of a rule to repeat my walk 20 times, hoping to satisfy my longing to witness a fleeting moment I might otherwise miss.
In the first round I noticed mostly casual movements of people, dogs and birds passing by.
At the start of the second round I stopped to look at the bush if there maybe would be a bird again.
No bird.
There was now a girl talking on the phone on a bench.
And a man emerged from behind the bush.
After about 5 or 6 rounds, expectation, recognition, and recollection began to intertwine.
The girl on the bench was still there, but the woman with the child was gone by the next round. I forgot about her, but three rounds later, she reappeared in my mind.
The girl phoning on the bench was now gone too.
The man who came from behind the bush, was now just a bush.
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After walking 15 to 20 rounds, I suddenly started remembering things I had forgotten and began to forget things I had previously recalled.
I started to make connections between things that were still there and things that were missing.
I thought about the condition of remembering to forget the rest and the other way around.
The bench was still there without the woman.
the road is empty,
the bush is alone, but I still saw a bird in it.
In the end I did one walk the other way around and everything seemed strangely unfamiliar and alien to me.
This is not the perspective I became used to.
Then suddenly this image popped up where I became the person coming from behind the bush.
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