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December Issue 2003
Lewis + Clark in Columbia, SC, Features Works by Dutch Artists
Lewis + Clark Gallery in Columbia, SC, is presenting the first American solo exhibition by prominent Dutch painter Kees Salentijn (b. 1947, Amsterdam) entitled, Kees Salentijn: Between Figuration and Abstraction. Also on exhibit is a show of one-of-a-kind relief prints and sculpture by German artist Reiner Mährlein (b. 1959) entitled, Reiner Mährlein: Abstraction in Granite, Paper and Steel. Both exhibitions will be on view through Jan. 31, 2004.
Mährlein is a widely
acclaimed artist in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
He is part of a regular cultural exchange between artists from
Columbia and its German sister city, Kaiserslautern. The medium
for both his sculpture and prints is granite and steel. His prints
are embossed, the result of pressing wet paper onto metal plates
and granite surfaces. The procedure creates abstract works with
a rich and rough, three-dimensional and architectural feel.
Mährlein studied art in Nuremberg and at the prestigious
Ecole Nationale Superieur de Beaux-Arts in Paris. In May, 2003,
five of his sculptures were part of the Garage Art Project
at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia. Three of those
sculptures sold to local collectors. Mährlein also showed
in Mar., 2003, with other artists from Columbia and Kaiserslautern
at the former Downtown Ducati showroom behind Motor Supply Co.
in the Vista.
Kees Salentijn
Kees Salentijn has been a forceful presence in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and other European countries for decades, but his reputation has reached new levels in recent years. Sales of his work have accelerated, as have prices. Earlier this year, selections from Salentijn's sketch and notebooks from the last decade were published as a book. It's the third book on the artist. A book on his painted ceramic plates was published in 1999. A 1991 book provided a retrospective of his work since 1984. The Lewis + Clark show will contain work from the mid-1980s onward.
The gallery will present paintings on canvas, mixed media works on paper, and silk screens. "We are delighted to show Kees Salentijn's work," gallery owner Clark Ellefson said. Although Salentijn's work has been shown in the United States as far back as 1982, at the Chicago Art Fair, he's not well-known here.
Salentijn graduated in the late 1960s from Amsterdam's Rietveld Academy and then from The Netherlands' National Academy of Art. His work is in several Western European museums. Since the early 1980s, he has been represented at prominent biennials and art fairs. They include the Bilbao Graphics Biennial, the Basel Art Fair, Intergrafiek Berlin, the Amsterdam Kunstrai, TEFAF Maastricht, Art Cologne, the Internationale Kunstmesse Cologne, and Art Multiple Dusseldorf.
Salentijn's work represents an esthetic that is not much developed in the United States. Within a US context, it relates to Willem de Kooning and Jean Michel Basquiat. The work at times has the force of Abstract Expressionism. At the same time it contains figuration that is reminiscent of children's drawings, as well as the work of Dubuffet, Miro, de Kooning, and, of course, some of the famous Dutch painters of the post-war era, such as Karel Appel.
Much of Salentijn's work is inspired by Spain, his second home, where he has traveled extensively in the past 25 years. Much of his subject matter is Spanish, as are the titles of most of his work. Salentijn likes to use the term "Mediterraneanism" to summarize his work. It's not so much a style but an attitude to life, one that appeals directly to the heart. Salentijn sees Spain as a collection of cultures that have long battled with each other. To him, it's a melting pot of temperaments in which he recognizes himself. He seeks to connect Spain's Southern elan with the Northern Calvinism of the Netherlands.
The early inspiration for Salentijn's work came from American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Arshile Gorky, Tom Wesselman, Adolph Gottlieb, and above all de Kooning. It also came from Spanish painters such as Antoni Tapies, Antonio Saura, and later Manalo Millares. From looking at de Kooning, Salentijn learned how to combine abstracted landscape and figuration. A duality between abstraction and figuration is central to his work. Salentijn has developed a personal style that combines the expressionist, painterly, vigorous stroke with smaller but equally expressionist marks that are quick and slightly nervous, but sure and on-target.
Salentijn's work also quite obviously fits within the legacy of the CoBrA movement. The movement was named after Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, the hometowns of many of its members. It existed as an organized group in the late 1940s-early 1950s and included Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Asger Jorn, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Egil Jacobsen, Christian Dotremont, and Pierre Alechinsky.
CoBrA art combined the energy and painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism, the subject matter of Art Brut and African art, and Surrealism's subconscious approach to making art. It produced an esthetic that became a mainstay in Western European art. Especially Salentijn's work since the early1990s has confirmed his link to the CoBrA legacy as figurative elements have become more pronounced in his compositions.
For further information
check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at
803/765-2405, or on the web at (www.lewisandclarklamps.com).
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