ArtAmsterdam

Ik ben deze week nu twee maal Naar artAmsterdam geweest. Ondag ga ik nog een keertje.

Een paar foto's staan hieronder.

Ik heb een optie genomen op dit werk:
"Oeteldonk"(de naam van 's Hertogenbosch tijdens carnaval)van Jantien Jongsma Gallerie Smarius.


Erik Sep in de stand van Gist


Op de voorgrond het Zuid terras achterin het schilderij van Ayako Rokkaku (Gallerie Delaive) dat ze maalte tijdens de eerste dagen van ArtAmsterdam.


Galerie 10 met Joris Kuipers


Werk van Annemarie Busschers in de stand van Gallerie Mokum

Budget en verzamelen 2

Feit: in mei ga ik het restant van mijn budget opmaken.

Ik ben u bezig om te preciseren welke kansen ik wil grijpen.

1. Carla van de Puttelaar Eigenlijk heb ik al besloten om een foto van haar te kopen, maar zolang ik hem nog niet heb gekocht zijn alle mogelijkheden open.
2. Liselotte Schuppers. Maandag heb ik haar thuis bezocht en twee foto's geselcteerd uit serie Anoniem. (Superman en Gladiator) Ze heeft me een goed aanbod gedaan.
3. Nicky Onderwater: Ik heb haar gemeeld voor een prijsopgave. De prijzen zijn stevig maar niet onredelijk, ze ad korting voor afdrukken die ze al gemaakt voor een tentonstelling. Het is moelijk kiezen uit haar werk.
4.Boukje Janssen: zij heeft een groepstentoonstelling "...Expectations" tijdens ArtAnsterdam met onbekend werk.
5. Enige andere kunstenaar op ArtAmsterdam die ik mogelijk tegenkom
6. Janneke Sprenkels: zij zal aanwezig zijn tijdens de Art & design sale in het Tac. Zij weet het niet, maar ze heeft een troef, één van haar werken staat op mijn want list.
7. Marleen v/d Heuvel and Liselotte de Groot zullen ook op de Art & design sale in het TAC zijn Maar geen troeven hier.
8. Andere kunstaars op de Art & design sale.
9. Merel van Beukering zal niet aanwezig zijn in het Tac maar ik heb contact met haar over een paar werken.
10. Afgelopen vrijdag heb ik nog meer mogelijkheden gevonden die ik domderdag nog niet kende. Om verwarring te vermijden laat ik deze even zitten.

Ik zal nog heel wat moeten trechteren.. .

Om de puzzel iets interessanter te maken :
elke kunstenaar heb ik het porijsberiek geven van het werk dat ik goed vind. Alle prijzen zijn in euro's. De rangorde is niet geheel random. Met een beetke kennis kan je de code kraken en decijfers met de letters verbinden.

a 2250 tot 4950 (ik wil er één)
b 850 tot 1500 (Ik wil er twee)
c 550 tot 975 (Ik wil er twee)
d schatting 300 tot 4000 (ik wil er minimaal één)
e schatting 200 tot 100000 (ik wil er minimaal één)
f 55 tot 425 (ik wil er minimaal één
g 100 to 200 (schatting)(ik wil er minimaal één
h onbekend normaal onder 100 (ik wil er minimaal één
i schatting 750 (Ik wil er twee)
j 85 tot 495 (Ik wil er twee)

Totaal is dit ongeveer 16000 euro. (Ik heb de vrijheid genomen om onwaarschijnlijk aankopen te verwijderen om een realistische som te verkrijgen.)

Van dat bedrag kan ik de betaling voor ongeveer 6000 euro uitstellen naar later jaren.(Ik weet dat er iets te regelen valt met galerieën) Dus dan houd ik 10000 euro over voor dit jaar. Mijn resterend budget is ongeveer 3000 euro.

Ik zal dus nog heel wat moeten trechteren.. .

Hoe ga ik kiezen: ten eerste ga ik naar ArtAmsterdan het Tac en de tentoonstelling Expectations. Dan zal ik beslissen.

Ik heb de neiging om meer high end en duurder werk te kopen (bijv. #1,2,4) Maar dat gaat wel ten kostte van vele goedkopere werken.
Niemand weet wat het wordt.

Ik beëindig dit bericht met de eerste foto die ik van Marije Arends kocht in 2005. In het vorige bericht liet ik de drie werken zien die ik als laatste van haar kocht.

budget and collecting

Collecting is choosing. Every budget is limited, so is mine. May is the month I usually spend the most money on art. This has two main reasons. The second is ArtAmsterdam, that is the biggest art fair in the Netherlands. It's mainly Dutch but it has a sturdy international component. Quality is high, some art is within my budget. The last two times I bought art and I never intended too when I went.

The first reason is the art and design sale in the Tac in Eindhoven. That's the place I started to buy art in such quantities I started collecting. Since the first time year it's kept I go and buy. This year won't be different.
Janneke Sprenkels will be there and probably Marleen v/d Heuvel or Matthijs v/d Kerkhof. Merel van Beukering and Liselotte de Groot (both on my watch list) might be there as well.
Tac is short for Temporary Art Centre. It's situated in an old Philips building. (For the Football fans: the Philips stadium, home base for PSV,is right across the street. Philips was founded in Eindhoven.) Tac is meant for creating art. There are dozens of ateliers in the building and a small dozen of multi purpose spaces. Exhibitions parties, workshops and the Art and design sale are held here. Many artists from my buy or watch list will be there so I will leave Eindhoven with a trunk full of art and ann empty wallet.

That's the easy part. There are however artists who are high on my watch list, but I'm sure I won't meet on ArtAmsterdam or in the Tac. So I'm helping faith a little bit. I e-mailed Liselotte Schuppers for a price query on the photography and I will go tomorrow to an exhibition from Liesje Reijskens in Amsterdam. Next to this I received lists from gallery Aeroplastics for Amanda Besl and Shadi Ghadirian.

The problem gets obvious far too many artists and works and not enough budget. To make things worse I've already decided to buy one large work from Carla van de Puttelaar. My biggest buy ever considering size (205 x 78 cm) and price (twice the amount from my second largest buy.) Although I will pay this in 36 months it still creates a gap in my budget.

I alomst forgot the works from Boukje Janssen which came back from New York but are stuck now at customs.

So this month it's decision time.

The least likely to buy this year is the work from Amanda Besl.
She makes paintings on small panels depicting adolescent girls.
To compensate here her picture "a beautiful moustache"



Artist's Statement of Amanda Besl:

In my recent work I try to evoke an open-ended fiction while speaking of the documentary quality of photography, the language of fashion photography, the viscosity of oil paint, and the transient nature of memory. My paintings emerge from a cultural feminine perspective, exploring the complexities of an aesthetic that fetishizes youth. The images are a string of metaphors that build series of events. The paintings are small in size in order to allow a more intimate viewing experience and to recall their history as photographic images. They pop from the wall off beveled edges to create a staccato rhythm of frozen suggestive moments. My pieces are cinematic in nature. I link seemingly unrelated sensory images which inform each other as narrative moments. The subject matter balances on the fine line between the mundane and the obscure. To view these paintings is to partake in a visual eavesdropping on the secretive world that engulfs today's girl.

I focus upon metaphors of the transient nature of adolescence. Horses act as a suggestive counterpart in paintings which are mostly devoid of human males. The fetishistic quality of these pocket-sized worlds emphasizes the idea of obsessive crushes. I am interested in heroic transformations of ordinary events which exist both as dark psychological secrets and as adult fairy tales supplanting their predecessors. These paintings are not nostalgic, except as personal nostalgia. They are not apologetic or hedonistic and have any number of possible endings or possibly no ending—just a pause, a breath.

Art Brussels 2009

This Friday I went to ArtBrussels. I should have been we but my Mfac co-student was confused by the wrong house number and never reached my house.
Artbrussels is held in the Expo next to the Atomium. It is divided into two halls. I took the backdoor because of the parking lot I'd put my car for the incredible amount of 4 euros. (I expected 10.)

I walked in and the first thing I grabbed was the floor plan. ArtBrussels is large. 172 galleries are represented. (425 wanted in) I think 3 to 4 football matches could take place in this space now dedicated to art. The next thing I did was grabbing a lunch and looking at the plan looking for familiar galleries.

Off course I should go to Ronmandos the gallery I had the invite from. I actually saw their booth just 5 hours later. I started in Hall 3 and had my first good surprise within 15 minutes. Aeroplasctics Contemporary sold paintings from Amanda Besl. Her paintings are on the first picture. They're all small, very realistic made in high detail and all from young women. I own two from her paintings. I bought them at ArtAmsterdam two years ago, my first buy from a gallery.

They had more work, I liked Shadi Ghadirian as well. But I think her fame Will make her very fast too expensive for my taste. Good for her though.
I saw a wonderful video from Antoine Roegier and missed an other one. I strolled from booth to booth saw very nice works from artists who are very well known but I had never known them. Endless my stroll was, after two hours I was just halfway hall 1 and still had one and a half hall left.
My conclusion half way therefore was. ArtAmsterdam and ArtRotterdam may be nice, but this is a different cup of tea. The quality of the art is the same, but the quantity is way larger. Luckily there was also a bar which sold good an cold Belgian beer. In total I visited them twice in my 5,5 hours walking amongst art, to drench my thirst and to rest my feet. I saw some nice works from Marina Abramovic. I thought she just made performances jeopardizing her own life. But she also makes pictures from Chinese children sleeping with M-16's.

Guided tours were held twice a day, and I joined one of the. Together with just two other people. While being guided I found out that I thought I'd covered now three quearters of the exhibition. Bu it really makes a difference which way you go through an aisle. The aisles I'd covered form left to right we now went through from right to left and while walking that way I saw completely different art.
So I'd missed a lot.
The tour was very nice. It mentioned the sculpture from picture two below. Is seems to abstract but if you look well enough a face can be seen.

After the tour I scooted through the last aisles, vsited RonMandos, and started to collect the prices and other information I wanted from the artists I really liked an were probably within my budget. The Austrian artist Marc Aschenbrenner shown by gallery Olaf Stueber (Berlin) , is one of them.
I collected my data, didn't buy a thing and went home. Dead tired but content after a 5,5 hour walk between international works of art I headed for my car.

Final cononclusion: best art fair I ever visisted, from the point of quality and quantity
Below some more overview pictures:

next purchase or dialogue

The same day I went to AFH (see previous post) I had to go on in a high pace to Amsterdam. (where else) I'd got an invite from Isolde,(no Tristan around)who made an exhibit together with nine other artists who took a course as starting curator. As a curator you must be able to make exhibitions so they created this trial as their course-project. As artists they had plenty of art available. So they could concentrate on the exhibit itself.
All these artists are young, not long time away from the academy and eager to show their own taste of creation. The result was a very pioneering, hard to grasp, out-of the box art. The exhibition was not located, like AFH, in a hallway in an industrial zone kilometers far from the city centre. It was next to heart of the city centre of Amsterdam in a house which the inhabitant had transformed into an exhibition space. It couldn't be further from AFH metaphorically speaking.
The result I bought a picture. I had only a low resolution jpeg, but I replaced it by a better one. In the picture you see a frame. I actually bought the picture framed in the same frame which is in the picture. It shows that the picture isn't disconnected from the real life. The frame in the real world frames the picture and within the picture the same frame frames a piece of the picture. This inner outer world connection is enhanced by the socket which is just in the upper right corner of the picture. Off course this socket is there on purpose. It's easier to leave the socket out of the view than to show the socket in that precise corner. This creates a down-to-eart approach: Isolde created a picture from a woman lying in a pink dress under a frame flat on the ground, but keep in my mind this picture was taken in a place where sometimes people need a light or to hoover so there is also a socket in the wall.

just another day at the office

So what does a collector do on a quiet Wednesday. Due to circumstances I was early away from work. So I went to the inner city of Utrecht.
At first I bought the book Puur (pure) from Mery dedicated to her project of photographing Teenage mothers.
Next I bought some white gloves to handle my art more cautiously. Some works form Boukje Janssen I recently bought, require more subtlety on handling.
After that I went to Flatland gallery to see their exhibition. It was a nice exhibition in a very nice building. I'd actually never been to that gallery. They focus on photography which I like but their aim is a little bit too high for my budget. After that I went to a second hand bookshop and bought an old catalogue from Sotheby's "photographs from the Bert Hartkamp collection" It gives a nice overview for the contemporary photography.
Finally I got home and found a letter from gallery Smarius. They sent me a special guest badge for the fair Art Amsterdam, so I can enter the preview and enter during this fair whenever I like for free.

Stop making sense

Stop making sense is the title of an exhibition I got an invite for. The exhibition is just a weekend in place. And is of course in Amsterdam. I got the invite because I am in contact with one of the artists. Isolde Woudstra is a fashion photographer with autonomous traits or the other way around: an autonomous photographer with fashion traits. (As long as the clothes do not consist of leather or fur.)
Below you see the first photo I bought from her. "My favourite sweater"



I'm sorry for the Americans who read my blog. But at school in the Netherlands we learn the UK-version of English. So it is favourite not favorite.

Amsterdam

For 15 years I've been living in Eindhoven. There goes the proverb "The only good thing in Amsterdam is the train back to Eindhoven." Nowadays I live in Utrecht, which is 80 kilometers closer to Amsterdam. Utrecht even looks like Amsterdam. An overcrowded city center. Parking problems combined with huge parking costs. Entering the city center by car without a TomTom or ten years experience is impossible. On the positive side. Because of the crowd everything is always happening. There are beautiful canals. The ancient city center has lovely buildings. By foot or bike you can reach any destination within 10 minutes.
The main difference between Utrecht and Amsterdan is, that Amsterdam is about three times as large. Both city center and city.

I had a meeting in Amsterdam for "My first art collection" We discussed how a gallery owner makes his prices and how taxes mingle with art. The latter one was discussed with Sigrid Hemels lecturer at Leiden University. She wrote a Dutch book for non-tax lawyers about that subject.

After the meeting being in Amsterdam I decided to go to the Melkweg for the exposition Pure from Mery I previously wrote about.
The exposition was overwhelming. I usually don't see many pregnant women. I never see them nude and I never ever saw 75 together in one building. Most amazing was that Mery was capable of showing each woman as an individual. All pictures were really different. I am happy to own two of these pictures.
A print 140 x 90 cm is 1000 euros one size smaller is 650 euros and 40 x 55 cm is just 250 euros.

Walking from the gallery "Serieuze zaken" to the Melkweg I encountered about 4 galleries which I all entered and where I studied the works of art.

After that I went to gallery RonMandos at the Prinsengracht. I encountered again about 4 galleries which I entered and where I studied the art.
At Ronmandos I was amazed about the huge gallery, which was just exhibiting two artists. I had a nice chat with the two employees and the quality was pretty high although not my collector's taste.

Now it was rather late so I just visited two unplanned galleries and went to "Eduard Planting fine art photography"
I saw beautiful pictures there and two very scary pictures. Loretta Lux showed these two.
Have a close watch to see WHY they're so scary.

Then I finally got lost towards Koch en Bosch That gallery I bought my works form Marjo van den Boomen. (having a baby so not on the art mood right now) My remarks about this exposition won't do it justice. The artist "mijn schatje" is a girl and she is mainly bought by girls.
Have a look at the picture. In an edition of 70 it is just 95 euros, Which I consider a bargain. All other works are under 1000 euros as well. If you anywhere like this get your work of art.

I really have to admit. Amsterdam is amazing with regard to the amount and quality of galleries. Probably half of all the galleries in the Netherlands are in Amsterdam. I just walked through a part of Amsterdam and saw dozens of interesting galleries.
Content I took the train back to Utrecht. Not the only good thing but still the best.


PS I bought a work of art yesterday night and I am really content about it.
Close visitors have seen that I moved one artist from "watching" to "in collection"
More Later.

Tefaf

The European Fine Art Fair is by lengths, the largest art fair in the Netherlands. I was there Saturday with my group from My First Art Collection (MFAC). Tefaf is situated in Maastricht, which is by far the most European city in the Netherlands because it's very close to our neighbours Belgium and Germany and very far from most of the Netherlands. The Maastricht Treaty is also well known adding an other European feature to this city.

When you're at Tefaf. You can see the most expensive painting for sale in the Netherlands, a 26 milion euro Van Gogh. You're standing in a space about as large as ArtRotterdam and ArtAmsterdam combined. You have paid 55 euro's for a ticket which is 3 times the price for the ticket of ArtAmsterdam and probably the catalogue which is 4 times as expensie as ArtAmsterdam's , but also 8 times as heavy.

The variety of art is massive. Jewellery, pottery, furniture, paintings through the last 4 ages but also ancient weaponry and suits of armour.

My taste is more the contemporary art. And with a football field to choose from I had more than enough to watch. Very remarkable was this a life-size sculpture by Duane Hanson It looked very scarily real. It was bought by the Scheringa museum. Not all the banks seem to bothered by the credit crisis.

There were also dozens of Fontana's, Richters, Picabia's, Magritte's. The sales of these kind of works of art I usually just read about in books. And now you can go ask for the price. The price you cannot afford.
A member form the Rotterdam of Mfac asked for the price of a painting she was drooling over. The Marlene Dumas was 120.000 euro's. About ten times as much she could afford...

For our group it wasn't buying just watching. But sometimes you don't need to buy art to enjoy it.

Exhibition in the Melkweg, Amsterdam.

Yesterday I got an invite for the opening of the exhibition: Puur Trotse Tienermoeders. (Pure, Proud Teenage Moms.) Exhibited are pictures (photography) from nude teenage moms either high pregnant either with a fresh baby.

Actually I own 2 of those pictures which are presented in th huge size of 140 X 90 cm. They're hanging in my bedroom (whether pictures of baby's and pregnant women are an incentive or a warning in my bedroom I leave to your own imagination)

The exhibition is in the Melkweg in Amsterdam and starts 2nd of April to 3rd of May.
You can find more info about the exhibition here.

For those who cannot afford a picture there is also books on sale from these exhibition for just 20 euro's.

At the right hand side the picture (Jilanka with Zion) I own which will also be exhibited.
Check the Mery's webisite for more pictures and info.