Jury report, printed art, Prix de Rome 1993 (ENG)
Published in catalogue Prix de Rome, 010 publishers (out of print)
Jury Prix de Rome 1993
(...)
Wapke Feenstra
Wapke Feenstra submitted a series of slides which showed her work from different angles and in detail so that the jury did manage to get a reasonable impression of the gum prints, which are difficult to photograph.
The works of Feenstra are usually highly magnified representations of objects: a nipple, a basket, a cobweb. Because of the thickness of the wooden carrier (about 10 cm) they are actually objects in themselves, hung on the wall. The jury were curious about the originals, although there was a certain question as to the technical perfection dominating the content of the work.
For the second selection Feenstra showed four of the works that the jury had previously seen slides of. Feenstra has a personal relationship with the objects she chose. They are quiet, unremarkable everyday objects which go unnoticed by most people.
Although the jury had certain reservations about the formal, distant side of the work, they are at the same time fascinated by the contrast it formed with its strictly personal and intimate side. Feenstra’s written explanation of the objects, her oral account of it and the work itself form a consistent whole. The jury were curious as to how Feenstra’s work would develop further. For the final round Wapke Feenstra worked in her own studio in Rotterdam where she had good facilities for her particular technique. In three months six new works emerged, four objects, a text about these works and “Canon Lady”.
The lady is shown four times in this publication: four different test sheets with which Canon shows the quality of its fax machines. The objects, again gum prints on fabric with wooden carriers, were described as ‘meditation objects’ by a jury member. The new work convinced the jury of the correct choice of technique and the method by which the works were realised. The distance between the idea and the result was qualitatively used in the ambiguity that arises between the intimate and the distant. There is in the work definite evidence of an expansion of the boundaries of the printed arts: here are objects which in the final analysis say as much about painting as about printed art.
The jury held different views on the relevance of the accompanying written descriptions. According to some, these showed a consciousness of the theme and its implementation and in this way imparted added value to the objects; others felt that the texts were too interpretative and over-defined the work.
With respect to the earlier work the objects had become more enticing, a quality which overruled the previous objections of excessive distance. Reason enough for the jury to award Wapke Feenstra the second prize of Dfl. 20,000.
(...)
The complete Jury Report:
Introduction
The graphics section has a long tradition with the Prix de Rome. In 1913 Engelina Reitsma-Valença was the first winner of the gold medal for what was then known as the ‘Graphic arts’.
In 1993 the advertisement text ran as follows: ‘The jury are interested in the artistic grounds from which a choice is made in the use of graphic media at the level of content and expression. They are curious about artists who explore the frontiers of graphic techniques and related qualities.’
This specific formulation is, partly because of the experience with the last Prix de Rome Printed Art in 1988, the result of the first discussion of the jury in 1993. Then in 1988, the jury was disappointed with the quality of the submissions. They had the impression that more interesting things must have been done in the Netherlands with graphic techniques than were evidenced by the submissions. This situations could have been explained by the ‘stuffy’ image of the Prix de Rome at the time and the traditional connotations of the word ‘graphics’.
The 1993 jury hoped their announcement would reach artists who are fascinated by the numerous aspects of the graphic media. Apart from their long tradition, the printed arts are characterised by so many new applications and possibilities relating to ‘the artwork in the age of technical reproduction’, that they constitute for many artists the medium per excellence for pronouncements on contemporary life or on art itself.
The Jury
The multitude of media falling under the collective term ‘printed art’ comprise a variety of methods and angles of approach. The breadth of the speciality is reflected in the composition of the jury. Carel Blotkamp is, in addition to an art historian and publicist, a painter and graphic artist. His production includes woodcuts and etchings. For Blotkamp, who prefers to maintain a distance between the producer and the art work, graphics is a highly suitable medium. For Yves Gevaert it is the complexity of graphics that constitutes its primary attraction. He is particularly interested in artists in other disciplines who work with graphic media. Gevaert himself is a publisher of editions and artist’s books, and worked with such people as Jan Vercruysse, Lawrence Weiner and Rodney Graham. In these collaborative projects Gevaert is closely and actively involved in the production and elaboration of the artwork.
Graphic in all its facets and forms of expression is familiar material for Klaas Hoek. Hoek worked for years as a lithographer for Piet Clement and together with Rento Brattinga, established “Ink on Paper” to promote the more experimental forms of the graphic arts. According to Hoek, the essential characteristics of graphics are the unique and the serial. The unique is expressed for instance in the specific line of an etching or the skin of a silk screen print. The serial concerns the capacity for multiple reproduction. The handling of graphic media should attest a conscious feeling for both aspects.
Matt Mullican is fascinated with the interface between graphics and graphic design. As a designer of an imaginary world he assembles, re-classifies and re-creates elements from the existing world. Mullican works in nearly all the media the Prix de Rome covers and selects for his works the most suitable medium for each succeeding section. Although Willem Oorebeek prefers not to be called a graphic artist, he works almost exclusively with lithographic techniques. His attitude towards the medium is discussed in the interview covering his experience as a Prix de Rome finalist in 1988 and jury member now. This text can be found at the end of this publication. Oorebeek has played an important innovative role in the use of the medium with his application of its serial capacity within a single work.
Preliminary Round
For the first selection the jury requested slides of work (a maximum of fifteen) unless the nature of the work made this absolutely impossible. There was a total of 103 participants of whom a few submitted originals.
The first slide selection took place at the Rijksakademie 3 and 4 May 1993. The jury’s general impression of the work at the end of the first day was positive. They were pleasantly surprised at the diversity and quality of the submissions. The number of used techniques was enormous: etching, woodcut, lithograph, heliogravure, gum print, computer graphics, silk screen printing, flock pint, linoleum cut and combinations of these. It was only in the area of the artists’ book that the jury found the submissions disappointing, both in terms of numbers and quality.
On the second day the work of forty artists was comprehensively viewed and discussed. From these participants, fourteen were asked to submit originals for the jury to evaluate for the second selection. Most of the artists were invited because the majority of the jury considered them as a possible candidate for the final round. Sometimes the slide evoked questions that could only be answered by the original. A few were invited as a result of the specific interest of a single member of the jury. The jury requested that for the second round. The participants appear in person to explain their work. At this point then, the element of anonymity was discontinued. The interviews, which lasted about fifteen minutes each, gave the jury more insight into the artist and his intentions, but were never decisive for the final judgement.
As with Drawing, the presentation of the work for the second selection took place in the BKB-building in Amsterdam. The participants showed the work which the jury had first seen as a slide, usually supplemented with other original graphic work. The jury found it difficult to restrict their choice to the maximum of four finalists and would have preferred the option of inviting a fifth participant.
Final Round
Three of the finalists could be regularly found – day and night – in the graphics studio. There techniques and methods of working were so different, however, that they did not get in one another’s way. The four artists, each with his own approach to the graphics medium, added up to a picture of the open situation within the discipline which the jury had already identified during the first round. The presentation of the final round work to the jury took place at the end of August in various rooms of the Rijksakademie.
The Final Round Candidates
Wapke Feenstra
Wapke Feenstra submitted a series of slides which showed her work from different angles and in detail so that the jury did manage to get a reasonable impression of the gum prints, which are difficult to photograph.
The works of Feenstra are usually highly magnified representations of objects: a nipple, a basket, a cobweb. Because of the thickness of the wooden carrier (about 10 cm) they are actually objects in themselves, hung on the wall. The jury were curious about the originals, although there was a certain question as to the technical perfection dominating the content of the work.
For the second selection Feenstra showed four of the works that the jury had previously seen slides of. Feenstra has a personal relationship with the objects she chose. They are quiet , unremarkable everyday objects which go unnoticed by most people.
Although the jury had certain reservations about the formal, distant side of the work, they are at the same time fascinated by the contrast it formed with its strictly personal and intimate side. Feenstra’s written explanation of the objects, her oral account of it and the work itself form a consistent whole. The jury were curious as to how Feenstra’s work would develop further. For the final round Wapke Feenstra worked in her own studio in Rotterdam where she had good facilities for her particular technique. In three months six new works emerged, four objects, a text about these works and “Canon Lady”.
The lady is shown four times in this publication: four different test sheets with which Canon shows the quality of its fax machines. The objects, again gum prints on fabric with wooden carriers, were described as ‘meditation objects’ by a jury member. The new work convinced the jury of the correct choice of technique and the method by which the works were realised. The distance between the idea and the result was qualitatively used in the ambiguity that arises between the intimate and the distant. There is in the work definite evidence of an expansion of the boundaries of the printed arts: here are objects which in the final analysis say as much about painting as about printed art.
The jury held different views on the relevance of the accompanying written descriptions. According to some, these showed a consciousness of the theme and its implementation and in this way imparted added value to the objects; others felt that the texts were too interpretative and over-defined the work.
With respect to the earlier work the objects had become more enticing, a quality which overruled the previous objections of excessive distance. Reason enough for the jury to award Wapke Feenstra the second prize of Dfl. 20,000.
Britta Huttenlocher
For the first selection Huttenlocher submitted slides of photomontages on paper attached to wood as well as several pencil drawings. The photomontages were composed of a repetition of certain details in black and white pictures of snow-covered mountains. The identical details form ostensibly a completely realistic mountain landscape. The artist takes a great deal of time for each work, sometimes as much as four years. The jury were intrigued by the work and wanted to see the originals. In the BKB-building Huttenlocher presented five works; two of these were drawings on canvas on a wooden carrier. For her the drawings are important as an opening towards the expansion of her other work. As a third option she would like to make line etchings, in the hope that this medium will offer new possibilities in the contemplation of structures.
The jury valued the professionalism of the work and the consistency with which Huttenlocher processed her ideas, but had some reservations because the photomontages tended to be too smooth and elegant. In the casual character of the drawing they saw an attempt to escape the formality and expected a continuation of this tendency in the line etchings.
During the work period Huttenlocher made use of the graphics studio of the Rijksakademie to produce copper etchings. She used the plates with finely drawn lines to print over photocopies of landscapes of snow-covered mountains. Sometimes the same structure was superimposed over different landscapes, sometimes one landscape had different structures printed on it. In this way Huttenlocher investigated how the copper print defined the photograph and vice versa, or how the two worked together. With this work she established the connection between the photomontages and her drawings. The jury was interested in the process with which Huttenlocher was occupied, but they felt that the combination did not in her terms result in enough added-value; the synthesis of the two elements was not yet sufficiently complete. The jury were aware that Huttenlocher’s work process required more than the three months available. The somewhat critical comments therefore do not detract from the fact that the jury continued to be fascinated by the work. Confronted with the impossibility of awarding two second prizes, they accorded Huttenlocher with a basic prize of Dfl. 10,000.
Hewald Jongenelis
For the first selection Hewald Jongenelis submitted a portfolio with 23 silk screen prints, each sixty-four by forty-eight centimetres, entitled “Plan for Well Drainage”. The work is a perpetual series of pages which in word and image form a sort of autobiography. They include depictions of houses in which he lived, his friends, his previous work, posters or invitation cards for exhibitions or references to current events that intrigue him. The “Plan for Well Drainage” is a project that Jongenelis is continually coming back to in addition to his own work, which consists of paintings, silk screen prints, books and installations.
The jury was fascinated by the work, the irony displayed by its details and by the idea of making a kind of autobiographic catalogue or monograph at the age of 31. A few jury members objected to the in-crowd character and considered the world on which the work focused too small. The expectations regarding the work period were therefore mixed.
Hewald Jongenelis installed himself in the silk screen section of the Rijksakademie’s graphics department with the intention of expanding the “Plan for Well Drainage” by some thirty additional pages. From each page sprung – as from a well – material for new work. The same motifs were repeated in new contexts. One jury member used the term ‘round singing’ to refer to the organic growth of the project. The work was not essentially changed, but through the concentration of three months’ effort, it did become more coherent. ‘There is actually more change in us than in him,’ remarked one of the jury. A number of aspects which were present in the previous series, only became clear to the jury later. The typographical qualities of the work and the image/text combinations were particularly appreciated. The page in this catalogue with the picture of the motorbike was mentioned as an example of how what in effect was a trite image had become a magnificent print through the application of lay-out and typography. Like a varying landscape, some pages contain abundant information which demands sustained attention while others require much less time to scan.
The way the artist was able to ‘write’ and ‘draw’ with the graphic medium and the way this perpetual sideline was turned into a independent work of art, in addition to the sensitivity and self-evident quality of this work, were sufficient reasons for the jury to award Hewald Jongenelis the first prize of Dfl. 40,000.
Remco Vlaanderen
The work submitted by Remco Vlaanderen initially made a rather unclear impression on the jury. The slides showed representations of an ‘etch a sketch ’device which hade been drawn on. Many will recognise the device from their childhood: a small box with two knobs, one for drawing vertical lines, the other for making horizontal lines. The line is always interrupted and completely disappears with a slight movement of the box. Vlaanderen took a photo of the completed drawing and printed it out with a laser printer.
All the drawings are concerned with the role of the artist and his various functions and manifestations. They have such titles as “The Operator”, “The Creator” and “The Performer” and show a person in front of a machine from which a variety of things sprout. As on a Droste tin, Vlaanderen show himself here in front of his drawing machine. The jury was unable to obtain a clear picture of the work from the slides, but was curious to see the original. They were also wondering about Vlaanderen’s other work, but for the second selection he submitted the same ‘etch a sketch’ series. The ten laser prints on the background of a large white sheet of paper together form a single work.
The quality of the drawings and the reference of the content to the artistic calling appealed to the jury. They appreciate the nonchalant loose character of both the drawings and the laser prints. There was a brief discussion as to whether the limits of the graphic medium specified by the jury were not unreasonably exceeded by him in this work, but the device was not for nothing called ‘ETCH a sketch’!
Remco Vlaanderen went to Amsterdam for the work period and used a studio at the Rijksakademie. As he explained in his interview with the jury, he was looking for a new form of presentation as an alternative to the laser prints. He settled on a duo-tone offset print of fifty by seventy centimetres on which a complete enlarged ‘etch a sketch’ devise is shown with a white border around it.
One print was for the presentation for the jury; of the other nine drawings photographs were shown. The works finally were hung on a metal strip at a distance of about ten centimetres from the wall. The jury thought it a pity that Remco Vlaanderen placed so much emphasis on the presentation of his work and took so much time to perfect it. In the view of the jury the presentations had become too important and thereby lost the relationship with the image. The drawings remained interesting but were developed not enough further. The jury awarded Remco Vlaanderen a basic prize of Dlf. 10,000.
Published in catalogue Prix de Rome, 010 publishers (out of print)
Jury Prix de Rome 1993
(...)
Wapke Feenstra
Wapke Feenstra submitted a series of slides which showed her work from different angles and in detail so that the jury did manage to get a reasonable impression of the gum prints, which are difficult to photograph.
The works of Feenstra are usually highly magnified representations of objects: a nipple, a basket, a cobweb. Because of the thickness of the wooden carrier (about 10 cm) they are actually objects in themselves, hung on the wall. The jury were curious about the originals, although there was a certain question as to the technical perfection dominating the content of the work.
For the second selection Feenstra showed four of the works that the jury had previously seen slides of. Feenstra has a personal relationship with the objects she chose. They are quiet, unremarkable everyday objects which go unnoticed by most people.
Although the jury had certain reservations about the formal, distant side of the work, they are at the same time fascinated by the contrast it formed with its strictly personal and intimate side. Feenstra’s written explanation of the objects, her oral account of it and the work itself form a consistent whole. The jury were curious as to how Feenstra’s work would develop further. For the final round Wapke Feenstra worked in her own studio in Rotterdam where she had good facilities for her particular technique. In three months six new works emerged, four objects, a text about these works and “Canon Lady”.
The lady is shown four times in this publication: four different test sheets with which Canon shows the quality of its fax machines. The objects, again gum prints on fabric with wooden carriers, were described as ‘meditation objects’ by a jury member. The new work convinced the jury of the correct choice of technique and the method by which the works were realised. The distance between the idea and the result was qualitatively used in the ambiguity that arises between the intimate and the distant. There is in the work definite evidence of an expansion of the boundaries of the printed arts: here are objects which in the final analysis say as much about painting as about printed art.
The jury held different views on the relevance of the accompanying written descriptions. According to some, these showed a consciousness of the theme and its implementation and in this way imparted added value to the objects; others felt that the texts were too interpretative and over-defined the work.
With respect to the earlier work the objects had become more enticing, a quality which overruled the previous objections of excessive distance. Reason enough for the jury to award Wapke Feenstra the second prize of Dfl. 20,000.
(...)
The complete Jury Report:
Introduction
The graphics section has a long tradition with the Prix de Rome. In 1913 Engelina Reitsma-Valença was the first winner of the gold medal for what was then known as the ‘Graphic arts’.
In 1993 the advertisement text ran as follows: ‘The jury are interested in the artistic grounds from which a choice is made in the use of graphic media at the level of content and expression. They are curious about artists who explore the frontiers of graphic techniques and related qualities.’
This specific formulation is, partly because of the experience with the last Prix de Rome Printed Art in 1988, the result of the first discussion of the jury in 1993. Then in 1988, the jury was disappointed with the quality of the submissions. They had the impression that more interesting things must have been done in the Netherlands with graphic techniques than were evidenced by the submissions. This situations could have been explained by the ‘stuffy’ image of the Prix de Rome at the time and the traditional connotations of the word ‘graphics’.
The 1993 jury hoped their announcement would reach artists who are fascinated by the numerous aspects of the graphic media. Apart from their long tradition, the printed arts are characterised by so many new applications and possibilities relating to ‘the artwork in the age of technical reproduction’, that they constitute for many artists the medium per excellence for pronouncements on contemporary life or on art itself.
The Jury
The multitude of media falling under the collective term ‘printed art’ comprise a variety of methods and angles of approach. The breadth of the speciality is reflected in the composition of the jury. Carel Blotkamp is, in addition to an art historian and publicist, a painter and graphic artist. His production includes woodcuts and etchings. For Blotkamp, who prefers to maintain a distance between the producer and the art work, graphics is a highly suitable medium. For Yves Gevaert it is the complexity of graphics that constitutes its primary attraction. He is particularly interested in artists in other disciplines who work with graphic media. Gevaert himself is a publisher of editions and artist’s books, and worked with such people as Jan Vercruysse, Lawrence Weiner and Rodney Graham. In these collaborative projects Gevaert is closely and actively involved in the production and elaboration of the artwork.
Graphic in all its facets and forms of expression is familiar material for Klaas Hoek. Hoek worked for years as a lithographer for Piet Clement and together with Rento Brattinga, established “Ink on Paper” to promote the more experimental forms of the graphic arts. According to Hoek, the essential characteristics of graphics are the unique and the serial. The unique is expressed for instance in the specific line of an etching or the skin of a silk screen print. The serial concerns the capacity for multiple reproduction. The handling of graphic media should attest a conscious feeling for both aspects.
Matt Mullican is fascinated with the interface between graphics and graphic design. As a designer of an imaginary world he assembles, re-classifies and re-creates elements from the existing world. Mullican works in nearly all the media the Prix de Rome covers and selects for his works the most suitable medium for each succeeding section. Although Willem Oorebeek prefers not to be called a graphic artist, he works almost exclusively with lithographic techniques. His attitude towards the medium is discussed in the interview covering his experience as a Prix de Rome finalist in 1988 and jury member now. This text can be found at the end of this publication. Oorebeek has played an important innovative role in the use of the medium with his application of its serial capacity within a single work.
Preliminary Round
For the first selection the jury requested slides of work (a maximum of fifteen) unless the nature of the work made this absolutely impossible. There was a total of 103 participants of whom a few submitted originals.
The first slide selection took place at the Rijksakademie 3 and 4 May 1993. The jury’s general impression of the work at the end of the first day was positive. They were pleasantly surprised at the diversity and quality of the submissions. The number of used techniques was enormous: etching, woodcut, lithograph, heliogravure, gum print, computer graphics, silk screen printing, flock pint, linoleum cut and combinations of these. It was only in the area of the artists’ book that the jury found the submissions disappointing, both in terms of numbers and quality.
On the second day the work of forty artists was comprehensively viewed and discussed. From these participants, fourteen were asked to submit originals for the jury to evaluate for the second selection. Most of the artists were invited because the majority of the jury considered them as a possible candidate for the final round. Sometimes the slide evoked questions that could only be answered by the original. A few were invited as a result of the specific interest of a single member of the jury. The jury requested that for the second round. The participants appear in person to explain their work. At this point then, the element of anonymity was discontinued. The interviews, which lasted about fifteen minutes each, gave the jury more insight into the artist and his intentions, but were never decisive for the final judgement.
As with Drawing, the presentation of the work for the second selection took place in the BKB-building in Amsterdam. The participants showed the work which the jury had first seen as a slide, usually supplemented with other original graphic work. The jury found it difficult to restrict their choice to the maximum of four finalists and would have preferred the option of inviting a fifth participant.
Final Round
Three of the finalists could be regularly found – day and night – in the graphics studio. There techniques and methods of working were so different, however, that they did not get in one another’s way. The four artists, each with his own approach to the graphics medium, added up to a picture of the open situation within the discipline which the jury had already identified during the first round. The presentation of the final round work to the jury took place at the end of August in various rooms of the Rijksakademie.
The Final Round Candidates
Wapke Feenstra
Wapke Feenstra submitted a series of slides which showed her work from different angles and in detail so that the jury did manage to get a reasonable impression of the gum prints, which are difficult to photograph.
The works of Feenstra are usually highly magnified representations of objects: a nipple, a basket, a cobweb. Because of the thickness of the wooden carrier (about 10 cm) they are actually objects in themselves, hung on the wall. The jury were curious about the originals, although there was a certain question as to the technical perfection dominating the content of the work.
For the second selection Feenstra showed four of the works that the jury had previously seen slides of. Feenstra has a personal relationship with the objects she chose. They are quiet , unremarkable everyday objects which go unnoticed by most people.
Although the jury had certain reservations about the formal, distant side of the work, they are at the same time fascinated by the contrast it formed with its strictly personal and intimate side. Feenstra’s written explanation of the objects, her oral account of it and the work itself form a consistent whole. The jury were curious as to how Feenstra’s work would develop further. For the final round Wapke Feenstra worked in her own studio in Rotterdam where she had good facilities for her particular technique. In three months six new works emerged, four objects, a text about these works and “Canon Lady”.
The lady is shown four times in this publication: four different test sheets with which Canon shows the quality of its fax machines. The objects, again gum prints on fabric with wooden carriers, were described as ‘meditation objects’ by a jury member. The new work convinced the jury of the correct choice of technique and the method by which the works were realised. The distance between the idea and the result was qualitatively used in the ambiguity that arises between the intimate and the distant. There is in the work definite evidence of an expansion of the boundaries of the printed arts: here are objects which in the final analysis say as much about painting as about printed art.
The jury held different views on the relevance of the accompanying written descriptions. According to some, these showed a consciousness of the theme and its implementation and in this way imparted added value to the objects; others felt that the texts were too interpretative and over-defined the work.
With respect to the earlier work the objects had become more enticing, a quality which overruled the previous objections of excessive distance. Reason enough for the jury to award Wapke Feenstra the second prize of Dfl. 20,000.
Britta Huttenlocher
For the first selection Huttenlocher submitted slides of photomontages on paper attached to wood as well as several pencil drawings. The photomontages were composed of a repetition of certain details in black and white pictures of snow-covered mountains. The identical details form ostensibly a completely realistic mountain landscape. The artist takes a great deal of time for each work, sometimes as much as four years. The jury were intrigued by the work and wanted to see the originals. In the BKB-building Huttenlocher presented five works; two of these were drawings on canvas on a wooden carrier. For her the drawings are important as an opening towards the expansion of her other work. As a third option she would like to make line etchings, in the hope that this medium will offer new possibilities in the contemplation of structures.
The jury valued the professionalism of the work and the consistency with which Huttenlocher processed her ideas, but had some reservations because the photomontages tended to be too smooth and elegant. In the casual character of the drawing they saw an attempt to escape the formality and expected a continuation of this tendency in the line etchings.
During the work period Huttenlocher made use of the graphics studio of the Rijksakademie to produce copper etchings. She used the plates with finely drawn lines to print over photocopies of landscapes of snow-covered mountains. Sometimes the same structure was superimposed over different landscapes, sometimes one landscape had different structures printed on it. In this way Huttenlocher investigated how the copper print defined the photograph and vice versa, or how the two worked together. With this work she established the connection between the photomontages and her drawings. The jury was interested in the process with which Huttenlocher was occupied, but they felt that the combination did not in her terms result in enough added-value; the synthesis of the two elements was not yet sufficiently complete. The jury were aware that Huttenlocher’s work process required more than the three months available. The somewhat critical comments therefore do not detract from the fact that the jury continued to be fascinated by the work. Confronted with the impossibility of awarding two second prizes, they accorded Huttenlocher with a basic prize of Dfl. 10,000.
Hewald Jongenelis
For the first selection Hewald Jongenelis submitted a portfolio with 23 silk screen prints, each sixty-four by forty-eight centimetres, entitled “Plan for Well Drainage”. The work is a perpetual series of pages which in word and image form a sort of autobiography. They include depictions of houses in which he lived, his friends, his previous work, posters or invitation cards for exhibitions or references to current events that intrigue him. The “Plan for Well Drainage” is a project that Jongenelis is continually coming back to in addition to his own work, which consists of paintings, silk screen prints, books and installations.
The jury was fascinated by the work, the irony displayed by its details and by the idea of making a kind of autobiographic catalogue or monograph at the age of 31. A few jury members objected to the in-crowd character and considered the world on which the work focused too small. The expectations regarding the work period were therefore mixed.
Hewald Jongenelis installed himself in the silk screen section of the Rijksakademie’s graphics department with the intention of expanding the “Plan for Well Drainage” by some thirty additional pages. From each page sprung – as from a well – material for new work. The same motifs were repeated in new contexts. One jury member used the term ‘round singing’ to refer to the organic growth of the project. The work was not essentially changed, but through the concentration of three months’ effort, it did become more coherent. ‘There is actually more change in us than in him,’ remarked one of the jury. A number of aspects which were present in the previous series, only became clear to the jury later. The typographical qualities of the work and the image/text combinations were particularly appreciated. The page in this catalogue with the picture of the motorbike was mentioned as an example of how what in effect was a trite image had become a magnificent print through the application of lay-out and typography. Like a varying landscape, some pages contain abundant information which demands sustained attention while others require much less time to scan.
The way the artist was able to ‘write’ and ‘draw’ with the graphic medium and the way this perpetual sideline was turned into a independent work of art, in addition to the sensitivity and self-evident quality of this work, were sufficient reasons for the jury to award Hewald Jongenelis the first prize of Dfl. 40,000.
Remco Vlaanderen
The work submitted by Remco Vlaanderen initially made a rather unclear impression on the jury. The slides showed representations of an ‘etch a sketch ’device which hade been drawn on. Many will recognise the device from their childhood: a small box with two knobs, one for drawing vertical lines, the other for making horizontal lines. The line is always interrupted and completely disappears with a slight movement of the box. Vlaanderen took a photo of the completed drawing and printed it out with a laser printer.
All the drawings are concerned with the role of the artist and his various functions and manifestations. They have such titles as “The Operator”, “The Creator” and “The Performer” and show a person in front of a machine from which a variety of things sprout. As on a Droste tin, Vlaanderen show himself here in front of his drawing machine. The jury was unable to obtain a clear picture of the work from the slides, but was curious to see the original. They were also wondering about Vlaanderen’s other work, but for the second selection he submitted the same ‘etch a sketch’ series. The ten laser prints on the background of a large white sheet of paper together form a single work.
The quality of the drawings and the reference of the content to the artistic calling appealed to the jury. They appreciate the nonchalant loose character of both the drawings and the laser prints. There was a brief discussion as to whether the limits of the graphic medium specified by the jury were not unreasonably exceeded by him in this work, but the device was not for nothing called ‘ETCH a sketch’!
Remco Vlaanderen went to Amsterdam for the work period and used a studio at the Rijksakademie. As he explained in his interview with the jury, he was looking for a new form of presentation as an alternative to the laser prints. He settled on a duo-tone offset print of fifty by seventy centimetres on which a complete enlarged ‘etch a sketch’ devise is shown with a white border around it.
One print was for the presentation for the jury; of the other nine drawings photographs were shown. The works finally were hung on a metal strip at a distance of about ten centimetres from the wall. The jury thought it a pity that Remco Vlaanderen placed so much emphasis on the presentation of his work and took so much time to perfect it. In the view of the jury the presentations had become too important and thereby lost the relationship with the image. The drawings remained interesting but were developed not enough further. The jury awarded Remco Vlaanderen a basic prize of Dlf. 10,000.
