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#105

 

Twenty-eight blocks stacked into a “staff,” which gives the work the suggestion of a utensil, refer to diversity, connection and perception.  The complexities of independent observation, the beauty and necessity of all kinds of diversity,  the joy of connecting with the cosmos, nature and fellow humans!

Photo: In Palais de Tokyo with Guillaume Désanges, October 16, 2024

Diversity is my starting point in 2011. The work ‘barre ronde de bois’ by Andre Cadere gave me the idea of stacking colored blocks into a staff. 

I appear in public with a staff to both present my work and commemorate André Cadere (1934-1978). He would have turned ninety this year.  His performances breathe a pleasant autonomy and are a response to his diagnosis of exclusionism in the art market.

The 28 blocks are not glued together but temporarily connected to a staff.

Each staff has a difficult-to-unravel organization and is more or less related to the surveyor’s red and white pole. The surveyor who maps earth’s surface without judgment: The art of seeing in pure form!   

A lot has remained the same since I made my first staff in 2011. First of all: the ecstasy of making; the sawing and assembling, the sanding, painting and overpainting the elements  until a chord emerges. 

While at first I was proud of not getting the wood from a construction store but cutting it myself in the forest, now I am happy because beavers throw long pieces of tree into the river for delivery to my studio.  

 

 

 

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#103

Staff # 103 is on show at PanAmsterdam Artfair till Sunday december1 2024, Contour Gallery booth 25

 

Every artist stands on the shoulders of many predecessors.   Through their artworks, I came to see the world better. In this almost endless line, there is one artist who is easily recognizable in my work. 

André Cadere was active between 1970 and his death in 1978. At that time you could have come across him at an opening with his mobile sculpture, his “barre ronde de bois”.   
The photo shows me with Hans Eijkelboom during an opening (March 23 2024) at the Kröller-Müller Museum.  

The mobile sculpture in my hand I call staff. The wood of this staff (#103) was felled by beavers and delivered to my studio by rivers. Staff #103 is in a private collection. 

André Cadere would have turned 90 this year. 















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Carry Hate

………..    Carry Hate

In front of you and harmony behind.

Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.

Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late

For having first to civilize a space

Wherein to play your violin with grace.
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Lines from the poem
‘First Fight. Then Fiddle’
by Gwendolyn Brooks,1949

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Carry Hate (Staff # 71)  125cm. < # 70  #>74

 

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I.M. Enrico Castellani

24 – 27 giugno 2022 Bar San Rocco, Piazza S. Rocco 12 Celleno (VT)

 The picture shows a box decorated with a staff.  It is the container of the staff entitled: I.M. Enrico Castellani (and numbered #81).  

     The painted container and the sculpture  are my tributes to Enrico Castellani’s works of art; his formalist poems in silver and white. Most of all I like his paper stack. Spartito, 1969/2004.  
(Read more of Enrico Castellani in The Guardian)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
It is also a tribute to Celleno where he lived until his death in December 2017. Celleno where I like to work in wintertime.  Celleno reminds me of the village I grew up in. All people connected. Connectivity and reunion are my subjects in my art practice. 

     In the village I grew up in, there lived a painter at the time. His studio was located between kindergarten and home.  At a friend’s house during primary school, I saw one of his gloomy but yet intriguing paintings of a swamp. Before I left the village to go to high-school, I tried to get up the nerve to interview him in his studio. 
He answered my questions while he was working on a painting. At one point he pushed his brush in purple paint – I was afraid he was distracted or irritated because of my questions and would soon spoil the painting with this ugly purple. The opposite happened, the painting gained more meaning instead! It was an eye-opening event!   
     In Celleno I hoped for an equally inspiring meeting, but in fact I was a  month too late; when I arrived in January 2018 Enrico Castellani had just passed away, aged 87.  
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 Some months later I made these ‘poems’ in black, white and gold dedicated to the artist Enrico Castellani and his direct environment.   
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Staff # 81 I.M. Enrico Castellani
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Lotta Continua 

When you possess guts combined with a talent to criticize, there is a constant threat of losing your friends, your job and your comfortable life, which tricks you into resignation. Staff #53 is a tribute to those who continue the fight to better the world. People like Miriam Makeba, Adriano Sofri, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Kamel Daoud ,Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Dom Phillips

Staff # 53.     92cm/ 36 ‘

< # 52. >  # 54

 

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Fai del bene e sii felice

Fai del bene e sii felice. La massima del filosofo olandese Baruch Spinoza è messa in pratica ogni giorno da Maria. Molto tempo fa i suoi antenati hanno abitato nella grotta alle sue spalle. Nel giardino crescono albicocchi e anche giovani ulivi. 7 febbraio 2020

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Maria Salvatori con il bastone n. 24, nel suo giardino assieme ai suoi polli.  

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Staff # 24.  139 cm  54 inch

Also known as: For Raymond Hains I

< # 23   >  # 25

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Passages 2024

Welkom op mijn studio op zaterdag 13 en zondag 14 april 2024 

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Speciaal voor buurtbewoners is er de tentoonstelling  P a s s a g e s georganiseerd met werk van mijn collega’s en mij.  

 U kunt op zaterdag 13 en zondag 14 april 2024  tussen 11.00u en 17.00u komen kijken naar de binnenkant van het gebouw en de kunstwerken die er gemaakt zijn.  En desgewenst in gesprek gaan met de kunstenaar. 
(meer informatie over de foto getiteld: Study! onderaan in cursief.) 
Entree € 5,-   Dobbelmannweg 5 6531KT Nijmegen.  
 
Especially for local residents the exhibition P a s s a g e s has been organised with works by my colleagues and me.      You can come on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 April 2024 between 11am and 5pm to see the inside of the building and the artworks created there.  And engage in conversation with the artist if you wish. 
 
Entrance fee € 5 ,-
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About the photo titled Study! read more below

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The photo shows the door to my studio.  From the left to the right: Two toddlers in memory of the former kindergarten, Emeritus Professor of Educational Studies at Radboud University Theo Bergen reenacting the statue on the frontside of the studio-building,  and a delicate balancing staff # 31.

The building in which my studio is located has a statue of Johanna de Lestonnac on the front facade. She has a book in her hands, to emphasize the importance of education. Johanna de Lestonnac was a woman who began educating girls in Bordeaux in the 16th century.

The building was part of a large Roman Catholic complex, with a church, a rectory, a cemetery, a convent and a variety of schools.
The building was originally built as a boarding school for girls. Then in 1931 it was transformed into a kindergarten. And in 1989, the building was converted into studios for artists.

 

 Staff # 31

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# 74

The birch is the first tree to appear growing on poor sandy soils. At the heart of a landscape of fields, a valley and a brook, my parents built their house on a small piece of sandy land. Close to the house, a birch lane ran towards a group of farms. These birches, these white stripes, are hallucinating. Every birch takes me back to my roots, my childhood, my parents and my grandparents in Aarle-Rixtel, close to Eindhoven.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# 74.  143cm < # 71. > # 78

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Find Contents in Future and Past, find Paradise in Between II

The greater part of this staff has kept its natural characteristics. The top is covered with gold, two lower parts are blackened by fire, and five polished parts at elbow height are suggesting a comfortable grip.
Staff nr 70 tells the story of relating the physical here and now with the mental import of future and past .   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Staff # 70   177cm/ 69′.   (Related to # 46 )    < # 69   > # 71 

 

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A delicate Balance

Munich Luisenstraße, Königsplatz,Karolinenplatz, November 9, 10 and 11 2011 
In 1973 André Cadere walked his Round Bar of Wood on the Avenue des Gobelins in Paris. In Remixing André Cadere’s act, Frank Bezemer walks this almost 9 feet long (265cm) Bar of Wood in Munich. Starting at the sculpture from Mauro Staccioli (Der Ring) on the Luisenstraße he walks to the Königsplatz and then Karolinenplatz.

On Thursday evening, during the opening of ‘Skulpturales Handeln’  Frank Bezemer presents (uninvited) a smaller staff in Haus der Kunst.


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Staff # 4  266cm

< # 3   > # 5

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