brothers and us - shangshang art space xiamen - 2011
At ShangShang Contempory Art Space in Xiamen Bart Drost developped two projects for the exhibition 'Brothers and Us':
Let's have a seat and talk about it
People often ask the artist 'What kind of work do you make?' But asking the question is often more easy than giving the answer. How to describe an image in simple words? Nowadays artists answer with a simple 'Take a look on my website.'
In the installation 'Let's have a seat and talk about it' Drost has found a unique way to give the visitor an idea of his art work and his artistic life. Not by referring to his website, not by showing just one painting, one drawing or one sculpture but by showing almost hundred photo's of his private home and studio in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In his believe daily life and making art are not two seperate worlds, they are woven together and form as such the complete life of the artist. The photo's are printed on format 30x50cm and form each the surface of hundred little notebook tables such as students in Xiamen usual use when they are laying in their beds. In this installation Drost invites the visitor to take a little chair and spend time together to have a chat about the images the tables are showing. Chatting on your notebook all alone in your bedroom is okay and of course very convenient, but nevert forget the importance of communication face to face. Take time, no hurry.
Pictures hang on walls
As the Xiamen Tan Kah Kee College Bart Drost in 2011 invited to be a guest teacher at the Art Department, they asked him also to do an exhibition of his artwork. Mostly artists see such as a possibility to create new works in a kind of artist in residence situation: making new things, experimenting with new forms, getting inspired by the new invironment. But in Drost?s opinion it would make more sense to show artwork that he made in his homeland, in his own studio in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Isn?t it true that Chinese art students are curious to see ?western art?? That they want to know how artistst in ?the western world? act and survive? For the installation ?Pictures hang on walls? Drost enlarged a vague black and white photograph that he took in his studio. At that time ? November 2010, it was the day of the open studio, so anybody could come in and take a look ? more than fifty drawings and paintings were hanged on a wall.
But being in China Drost couldn?t refuse the new possibilities of copying one will find nowadays in nearly every street corner, so he gave a new form at the images. Some of them he ?took from the wall? and re-created them into flat two-dimensional objects, which he enriched with gold and a little red. The new works became a sort of religious items, very easily to carry with you in a procession. Sacrefying the arts, so to say!