This week we connected Tom van Veen and Vincent de Boer. They answered each others questions about their studios and artwork.
During working on an artwork: do you thrive more on the ‘believe’ in that it’s going to surprise you when it’s done or on the freedom or pleasure of the ‘not knowing’ if it’s going to be something you’ll like at all?
An artwork should always transcend itself and show you new corners towards your practice or source ideas/themes worth exploring. When this is not happening, you should write the message and leave the artwork. The artwork is to mesmerize and to create space for thought and open up boundaries, not to be confused with the clear language of text.
In the process of artmaking, is the act of making ‘superior’ the all other parts of the process, or do you feel like all secondary things related to artmaking somehow can be primary at some point as well?
As a painter I work from the medium towards a contextual or layered source idea/approach. The message is the medium, bringing back the painterly view with a research on surface, strokes, and belief that when seen the work is seen in real life, it’s more likely to give an experience of delay inherent in painting (you can see and feel the time it took to create the image).
Today’s visual culture is exhaustingly present, do we -as artists- contribute to this?
Within a trans-historical perspective I tend to bridge the gap between current and older stories to work towards the universal or archetypical.
Do you consider yourself a romantic artist?
Without romance life would be bleak.
The bigger the brush the better?
Of course not. Every brush can/should be there. A dangerous question though, I feel comfortable talking about brushes for several hours :) Precisely for this exhibition at Unfair, I looked for a great contrast in terms of brushes: my very largest together with 1 of the smallest, on a panel. I think the contrast in time is important there: 8 months of small strokes, versus a 40 second response.
Will your presentation at UNFAIR23 build on a more intuitive or rational approach?
Don’t know, I think both go hand in hand, even if you wouldn’t want to. I had a plan, over six months back, that came as a “logical consequence” from other projects, quite intuitively. Over the past few months, the plan has completely transformed into something relating but new :) I then recreated the entire installation to the rational centimeter in the studio, in preparation for the exhibition.
Tom van Veen The Shift (2021)
Vincent de Boer Blackhole (2017)
These interviews are part of an ongoing series of short interviews between Unfair artists, originally published through our mailings. Check the overview to read the other interviews or subscribe to our mailing list through the button below: