The Line According To: August 29- September 9, 2008

To view works by Kees Salentijn in this exhibition click HERE.

if ART

presents at

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

THE LINE ACCORDING TO

Roland Albert – Mary Gilkerson – Sjaak Korsten 

&

Kees Salentijn

August 29 – September 9, 2008

Artists’ Reception: Friday, August 29, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 238-2351/255-0068 – wroefs@sc.rr.com

For its August – September exhibition, if ART presents at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios The Line According to Roland Albert, Mary Gilkerson, Sjaak Korsten & Kees Salentijn. German artist Albert will present mixed media, mostly wood-based sculptures, and Columbia’s Gilkerson, a new series of monotypes. Dutch painter Salentijn will show paintings, mixed media works on paper, painted ceramic plates, lithographs and silkscreens. Korsten, another Dutch artist, will show mixed media works on paper. Korsten has recently joined if ART Gallery, and the upcoming exhibition will be his first in the United States.

Albert (b. 1944) is a widely respected painter and sculptor in Germany. He is part of the artists’ exchange between Columbia and its German sister city of Kaiserslautern. Albert studied with the famous Greek-American sculptor Kosta Alex in Paris in 1964. In 1970, he graduated from the prestigious Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Albert’s work overall fits European post-World War II contemporary traditions. He shares Joseph Beuys’ love for rough and unfinished materials. Like Art Informel artists such as Spaniard Antoni Tapies and fellow German Emil Schumacher, Albert considers not just forms and shapes important but also the tactile and physical quality of his materials.

Gilkerson (b. 1958) has recently completed monotypes for her Three River series based on Columbia’s Congaree, Saluda and Broad rivers. The sometimes strongly abstracted works are based on photos and drawings Gilkerson made earlier this year during walks along the riverbanks. Gilkerson for many years has been prominent on the art scene of the South Carolina Midlands as an artist, critic and curator. She teaches art at Columbia College in her hometown of Columbia. Gilkerson holds BFA, MA and MFA degrees from the University of South Carolina.

Korsten (b. 1957) is widely known and respected in the Netherlands. Not unlike Albert, he works in established post-World War II European modern and contemporary traditions. His work is related to Art Informel artists such as Tapies, Jaap Wagemaker, Wols, Jean Fautrier and Manalo Millares. Much of the focus in their work and that of Korsten is on materials and surface. While Korsten’s work is heavily abstracted, he typically includes representative elements. Korsten’s work has been shown at major European fairs, including TEFAF Maastricht, PAN Amsterdam and the Cologne Art Fair.

Salentijn (b. 1947) is among The Netherlands’ most prominent painters. The initial inspiration leading to his mature style came from post-war American art and from Spanish painters such as Tapies, Antonio Saura, and later Millares. Salentijn developed a personal style that combined the expressionist, painterly swath with smaller but equally expressionist marks that are quick and slightly nervous but sure. Combining vigorous painting with often-childlike imagery, Salentijn’s work eventually placed him in the Northern European, post-war CoBrA tradition of strongly expressionist, abstracted art that containes representational elements. Salentijn’s increased use of figuration in the 1990s confirmed this link. His work is in several European museums. In addition to the 1982 Chicago Art Fair, his work has been represented at major European art fairs, including Art Fair Basel, TEFAF Maastricht, Kunstmesse Cologne and KunstRAI Amsterdam.

Essay: Kees Salentijn

Vaca Con Tres Cabezas, 1998

Mixed media on paper

11 x 15 in

SOLD

Kees Salentijn 

By Wim Roefs

August 2008

Kees Salentijn’s work fits the tradition of the Northern European, post World War II movement called CoBrA, which featured artists such as Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Asger Jorn, Jacques Doucet, Lucebert and Pierre Alechinsky. CoBrA combined the energy, spontaneity and painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, the subject matter and imagery of Art Brut, children’s drawings, Nordic mythology and African figuration, and Surrealism’s subconscious approach to making art. It produced an esthetic that became a mainstay in Western European art but is not developed as widely in the United States, although Gottlieb’s 1940s pictographs are related, as are Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings.

Initially, though, Salentijn’s inspiration did not come from CoBrA, which was named after Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the cities of its leading members. Salentijn at first looked at post-war American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, and above all Willem de Kooning. He also had great affinity with Spanish painters such as Antoni Tapies, Antonio Saura, and later Manalo Millares.

 

Salentijn learned from looking at de Kooning how to combine abstracted landscape and figuration. More than any other Abstract Expressionist, de Kooning retained figuration. As such he formed a de facto bridge between the American movement and one of its European equivalents, CoBrA. In the process, de Kooning provided Salentijn with a backdoor entrance into a tradition that began when Salentijn was born, around the corner from where he was born in Amsterdam.

By studying de Kooning, Salentijn established the parameters of his art. A duality between abstraction and figuration became central. He developed a personal style that combined the expressionist, painterly, vigorous swath with smaller but equally expressionist marks that are quick and slightly nervous but sure and on-target. Salentijn, wrote Leo Duppen, the former director of the Netherlands’ CoBrA Museum, draws like a painter and paints like a draftsman.

Salentijn’s work since the early1990s has confirmed his link to the CoBrA legacy as figurative elements have become more pronounced in his work. In the duality between abstraction and figuration, his emphasis changed somewhat. Rather than lacing abstracted spaces, including landscapes, with figurative forms, Salentijn increasingly used figuration to create abstracted spaces.

Salentijn’s recent work is strongly figurative, and sometimes he worries that the work gets stuck in figuration. But even when there is that danger, there’s always more to see than the figure. What impresses is Salentijn’s ability to create raw compositions as well as sweet renderings of little girls, old men, couples or women from a whirlwind of bold lines and marks. In its most figurative form, Salentijn’s work is still a marvel of organized turbulence that infuses any of the work, even those done in the loveliest of colors, with raw energy. And always his markings serve the subject matter no more than the subject matter is an excuse to make the marks. 

EXHIBITION PREVIEW

Preview of Kees Salentijn's work in if ART Gallery's August 29- September 9, 2008 exhibition The Line According To Albert, Gilkerson, Korsten, and Salentijn at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, 808 Lady Street, Columbia, SC.

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

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Biography: Kees Salentijn

Miss Saigon, 1996

Mixed media on paper

15 x 23 in.

KEES SALENTIJN (Dutch, b. 1947)

Kees Salentijn is among The Netherlands’ most prominent painters. The initial inspiration leading to his mature style came from post-war American art, including Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Tom Wesselman, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, and above all Dutchman Willem de Kooning. It also came from Spanish painters such as Antoni Tapies, Antonio Saura, and later Manalo Millares. Salentijn developed a personal style that combined the expressionist, painterly swat with smaller but equally expressionist marks that are quick and slightly nervous but sure. Salentijn, wrote Leo Duppen, the former director of The Netherlands’ CoBrA Museum, draws like a painter and paints like a draftsman. Combining vigorous painting with often-childlike imagery, Salentijn’s work eventually placed him in the Northern European, post-war CoBrA tradition of strongly expressionist, abstracted art that contained representational elements. Salentijn’s increased use of figuration in the 1990s confirmed this link. His work is in several European museums. In addition to the 1982 Chicago Art Fair, his work has been represented at major European art fairs, including Art Fair Basel, TEFAF Maastricht, Kunstmesse Cologne and KunstRAI Amsterdam.