When you think of illustration, you might immediately think of a flat image. But what makes something flat?
Niet Plat
Artists
Curator
- Joosje Bosch
- Anna van Duijn
- Julia van Duijn
Graphic design
- Maaike van Everdingen
Fotografie
- Eva Knoote
On show from 16.12.2022 to 07.01.2023In the new exhibition Niet Plat (”not flat”), you get to see the creases, bumps and rough edges of the profession. After all, behind the flat image can be a whole world hidden.
Living and working in Amsterdam. Alvites works as an illustrator, graphic designer and artist. He has been obsessed with drawing and painting ever since he was young: The burning house, being on the road, searching for solitude and nature. Simultaneously flirting with big city life, flashy streets and endless bars.
These contrasting topics interact in a new way, by referring to a place forever in motion. By applying, removing, covering and painting over illustrative building blocks, these elements combined, speak a language. Enhancing mistakes and coincidences is an essential part of this process. Living in these fast and complicated times had let Alvites rethink community and ways to reconnect with one another through art.
Flat illustrations can come to life in three-dimensional space.
NoCargo expo is a project inspired by the hobo scene.
Around the nineteen hundred, when the first homeless travellers appeared on the American railroads. To cope with the uncertainties of hobo life a system got developed of symbols, a visual code. Hobos would write this code with chalk or coal to provide directions, information and warnings to others around the train yards.
The symbols change over time, they became less basic and more artistic or poetic.
An illustration becomes an object. A painting can take on a woolly texture.
Objects take on human forms and humans and are abstracted to the extremes on the other hand. Strange creatures flow from this and are placed in Hoek's digital sculptures. These sculptures tell stories and explore the edges of aesthetics. The idiosyncratic image maker uses bright colours and likes to use open-source mediums. Hoek does not hesitate to let the snags of these mediums determine her work. The (partial) relinquishment of control contributes to the alienation she seeks in her images.
Niet Plat will show you the work of four artists. Fresh off the press, but not flat.
Her work serves as a vessel for the forgotten stories behind these crafts, which she finds while researching techniques. Stories that create fuel for discussion and conversation. Mixing up timelines that fascinate her to make a new visual language that fits her universe, often challenging the idea we have of feminine and masculine within textiles. At this moment her practice is focussed on finding correlations between the modern ruins of her city, and patchwork techniques.
Niet Plat was on show from 16.12.2022 to 07.01.2023. Many gratitudes to the artists for being part of this exhibition.