My exhibition Echo Chamber depicts a symbiotic process that I capture with paintings. These paintings are made in succession. In each new painting, I generate subject matter in a continuum from the previous painting. Collectively, they represent a passage of time, a situated space, and the circumstances in which they were created. Echoes of previously created paintings, sculptures, tools, and leftover materials from projects of mine and my studiomate appear as visual language within these works.
A painting often begins from a photograph which I adapt several times within a painting to create an organic and layered image. I look for a still yet living representation. Creating paintings turns my studio space into an animistic tableau where I attempt to connect a reality within another reality. Artificial lighting, composition and sculpture are used to create a scene that looks both messy and mystical.
The last two paintings in this exhibition were made during the installation of the exhibition in the gallery. Consequently, the viewer sees in these paintings the space in which they are currently located. This mirroring aims to create a sense of disorientation in the viewer, and raises questions about their sense of reality, space and illusion.
In my projects, I do not attempt to create a fiction, but rather, I place an unusual or alternative reality within my reality. My method often focuses on the transformation of locally available material that is given meaning by giving it a new function. I look for interaction with site-specific conditions that initiate a process. What connects my work inside and outside the studio is an imaginative reflection on observed reality. I aim to give a process of manifestation a central place in my work.
In 2014, I orchestrated the live event Recording in wood. Within the exhibition space, 12 local musicians made music for exactly 4 hours while 10 invited artists were instructed to duplicate the musicians' musical equipment in wood during these 4 hours. The event highlights how documentation always impacts a live situation. The noise of the artists' power tools drowned out the loud rock music, which in turn caused the musicians to turn up the amplifiers and made verbal communication during the live event nearly impossible.
After the event, the noise seemed to be trapped in the wooden sculptures that were left as artifacts. "They held still like objects of shamanism that only come to life with the right ritual," wrote Jeanne Prisser in her article about the exhibition in De Volkskrant. The symbiotic process that created the exhibition left both sawdust and the smell of beer in all corners of the exhibition space, and gave the work a palpable passage of time.
Since 2016, I have been making saunas in public spaces. The first sauna was both built and heated with the wood left behind by other artists in the storage area of ZSenne Art lab. The art space is located in a culturally and religiously mixed neighborhood in the center of Brussels.
The Common Sweat Sauna #1 was improvised and built in seven days on a square in front of the art space. This public production aimed to make visible the transformation of material. Neighbors quickly offered building materials and the public building process created a social breeding ground that the work intended and needed.
Artists involved in the art space, visitors and local residents sat in the sauna to experience the artwork through physical engagement and contemplation in the company of others. The deliberate absence of windows created a contrast between the sensory space of the sauna and the life on the street immediately beyond. The street sounds, such as a passing rolling suitcase, were experienced by sauna visitors as unreal, so much so that the entrance to the sauna was described as a portal into a space of magic realism. My role as an artist here is performative, acting as a catalyst to this situation.
With the Common Sweat Sauna project, I respond to the function and history of the art space by using remnants of previous exhibitions on the one hand, and interacting with the immediate social and public environment on the other. The relationship between artwork, spectator and exhibition space is subverted and activated in a new configuration.
During my stay in Curaçao in 2017, I was strongly attracted to a desolate piece of land on the northeast side of the island. Coral di Tabac, I was told, often appears in folk ghost stories. It is an uninhabited piece of land that acts as a dumping ground for washing machines, broken furniture and refrigerators, and is full of the fast-growing Datu cactus. It is also a place for criminals to strip cars and it is best not to walk around there at night.
With permission from the environmental department, I sawed down a large 9-arm cactus weighing about 1,000 kilograms, which I hollowed out. I then allowed the cactus skin to ferment and dry. Using this material, I made a large sculpture of a cactus head, which I used to participate in the large Carnival parade together with a group of invited art students.
That plastic chair is my friend 2017
Inspired by ideas of animism and local ghost stories, I started painting again during this residency. I saw in that desolate plain with garbage and cactus not only pollution and nature, but also a landscape that seemed to lead a life of its own at night.
By focusing entirely on painting over the past year, I have gained more clarity about my artistic motivations: I am looking for a superlative that stems from an imaginary or mystical reality placed within an existing reality.
The act of painting is performative. I act and perform within my own created scenario and find new perspectives to further my search for magical realities. The sculptures that I recently featured in my work are like caves or stalactites: they refer both to the echo of a cave (as an acoustically reflective space), and to Plato's cave itself, which serves as an allegory for a philosophical process of awareness towards an ideal, or in this case, my own staged world.
text 2022
Steven Jouwersma
29–10-1982 Franeker, NL. Lives and Works in Brussels and the Netherlands.
Education
2005-2007 - MFA – Interactive Media Environments - Frank Mohr Institute - Groningen
2007 - Michaelis School of Fine Art - Cape Town – South Africa
2000-2004 - BFA - Painting - Minerva Art Academy - Groningen
Residencies
2023 - Waterwerken, Rotterdam
2022 - Kunsthuis Syb, Beetsterzwaag
2017 - dinA, residency Brussels
2017 - IBB, Curaçao, Mondriaan Fonds
2015 - Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Mondriaan Fonds
2013 - PiST/// Istanbul, Mondriaan Fonds
2012 - Casa Rio, Amazon Brasil (in collaboration with Veridiana Zurita)
2012 - Tembe Art Studio, Moengo Surinam, Fonds BVBK residency
2009 - Art Bakery, Douala Cameroon, Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn.
Public events (selection)
2023
Common Bread Sauna, Waterwerken, Rotterdam (solo)
Time compressed, Brussel imprimerie, (groupshow)
Dia-Exit, Nadine, Brussels, Photo Festival Brussel (solo)
2022
Je vergeet jezelf nog een keer, Kunsthuis Syb, Beetsterzwaag (solo)
Dwelling Bodies, n0dine, Brussels, With Various Artists (Trudo Engels)
PRÉ-AVIS, n0dine, Brussels (groupshow)
2021
Surplace, KASK, Gent, (groupshow curated by Edwin Carels)
untitled group excursions, n0dine, Brussels (groupshow with Elen Braga, Maurice Meewisse and Sina Seifee)
2020
Echo chamber, n0dine, Brussels (solo)
Broken TV and listening tree, De Aanschouw, Rotterdam (solo)
Wandering Arts Biennale, nadine, Brussels
Zones of disobedience - Close encounters, public talk, apass, Brussels
Feetback, Zsenne Artlab, (group show with Christian Hansen)
2019
Update - 30 years, SIGN, Groningen (selection of 30 SIGN artists)
Soft Landing Editions, TAC, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven
Soft Landings Editions, Sexyland, Amsterdam
Jumping the Shark final event, Het Resort, Groningen (Feiko Beckers and Alban Karsten)
2018
Common Sweat Sauna #2 and #3, Zsenne Artlab, Brussels (solo)
Spektakulo di Kabes di Kadushi, Artspace dinA, Brussel (solo)
Jumping the Shark, Het Resort, Groningen (Feiko Beckers and Alban Karsten)
Sauna Ajot, Mobile sauna festival, Teuva, Finland.
Grants – Prizes
2021 - Mondriaan Fund - Basic Grant for 4 years.
2018 - Vlaamse Gemeenschaps Commissie – Project fund – Common Sweat Sauna tours.
2017 - Mondriaan Fund - Budget for residency IBB - Curaçao
2014 - Mondriaan Fund - Budget for residency Bethanien - Berlin
2013 - Mondriaan Fund – Budget for residency PiST/// - Istanbul
2012 - Fonds BKVB - Budget for Residency Tembe Art Studio – Surinam
2011 - Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst - Haunted Band