More housekeeping.

Yesterday I installed my last piece of art I bought at ArtRotterdam. It's very fragile and really 3-d. So I had to find a spot. Where know one comes I don't know about, my cat cannot come, where there is no wind or draught.
So I placed it in my bedroom on eye level.
It consists of two small mirrors in an angle of 90 degrees and in between a transparent sheet with the text from a sermon on it, with as a subject: when does one actually exist.
The object is between two photographs, one from Isolde Woudstra on the left and one from Mery on the right.

Art Brussels 2009

This Friday I went to ArtBrussels. I should have been we but my Mfac co-student was confused by the wrong house number and never reached my house.
Artbrussels is held in the Expo next to the Atomium. It is divided into two halls. I took the backdoor because of the parking lot I'd put my car for the incredible amount of 4 euros. (I expected 10.)

I walked in and the first thing I grabbed was the floor plan. ArtBrussels is large. 172 galleries are represented. (425 wanted in) I think 3 to 4 football matches could take place in this space now dedicated to art. The next thing I did was grabbing a lunch and looking at the plan looking for familiar galleries.

Off course I should go to Ronmandos the gallery I had the invite from. I actually saw their booth just 5 hours later. I started in Hall 3 and had my first good surprise within 15 minutes. Aeroplasctics Contemporary sold paintings from Amanda Besl. Her paintings are on the first picture. They're all small, very realistic made in high detail and all from young women. I own two from her paintings. I bought them at ArtAmsterdam two years ago, my first buy from a gallery.

They had more work, I liked Shadi Ghadirian as well. But I think her fame Will make her very fast too expensive for my taste. Good for her though.
I saw a wonderful video from Antoine Roegier and missed an other one. I strolled from booth to booth saw very nice works from artists who are very well known but I had never known them. Endless my stroll was, after two hours I was just halfway hall 1 and still had one and a half hall left.
My conclusion half way therefore was. ArtAmsterdam and ArtRotterdam may be nice, but this is a different cup of tea. The quality of the art is the same, but the quantity is way larger. Luckily there was also a bar which sold good an cold Belgian beer. In total I visited them twice in my 5,5 hours walking amongst art, to drench my thirst and to rest my feet. I saw some nice works from Marina Abramovic. I thought she just made performances jeopardizing her own life. But she also makes pictures from Chinese children sleeping with M-16's.

Guided tours were held twice a day, and I joined one of the. Together with just two other people. While being guided I found out that I thought I'd covered now three quearters of the exhibition. Bu it really makes a difference which way you go through an aisle. The aisles I'd covered form left to right we now went through from right to left and while walking that way I saw completely different art.
So I'd missed a lot.
The tour was very nice. It mentioned the sculpture from picture two below. Is seems to abstract but if you look well enough a face can be seen.

After the tour I scooted through the last aisles, vsited RonMandos, and started to collect the prices and other information I wanted from the artists I really liked an were probably within my budget. The Austrian artist Marc Aschenbrenner shown by gallery Olaf Stueber (Berlin) , is one of them.
I collected my data, didn't buy a thing and went home. Dead tired but content after a 5,5 hour walk between international works of art I headed for my car.

Final cononclusion: best art fair I ever visisted, from the point of quality and quantity
Below some more overview pictures:

collecting and connecting

As a single and more living inside my head than outside it is often a lonely job being an art collector. My colleagues and friends are at least bewildered when they find out I pay as much as an inclusive two-week Holiday to Turkey for a few works of art I bought at ArtRotterdam and considered cheap.

I don;t have the budget to go with the crowd when buying, so I chase my own taste. I have no spouse or children who are dependent on me. So all the money I have left I can put in my art-budget and no one complains about it.

So I do have some urge to connect with fellow collectors who understand my problems like will I buy three photographs from Marije Arends or one from Hellen van Meene?

As an IT-consultant, to keep the headhunters away I will not specify my specialty, I have a profile on linkedin. I'm already connected to three different art groups.
The problem is however is that those artgroups are spammed by professionals in the art scene who want to sell their services, their own art work, or the art work they represent.

Somehow I was delighted when I was made aware of www.independent-collectors.com A networking site for collectors only. It's Germany based so most collectors are European. And for me an important German area as the Ruhr area is about a two hour drive by car. So very close.

The site is just starting so to start up they asked Tommi Brem to start a blog about starting collecting art. So he did here.
He is a really new not in collecting, he collected SF-books and records before this, but he is in art.

Although he is confronted with the same problems as I am. Many impressions, small budget, what to buy, why to buy. There also huge differences. He has a wife, who must be devoted to him and sometimes in complete denial of his actions. (She picked up a piece of art at German customs containing a drawing with a swastika, which is illegal in Germany.) So he cannot exceed his budget without getting up in a row with his wife. I can decide to enlarge my budget whenever I feel like it.
The other one and more important one is that I started to paddle in the sea of art by buying a painting somewhere in 1999 at a local second hand bookshop in Middelburg.
A picture of it, I show in this post. He really plunged in the deep. He has been to Art Basel with side shows and Art Basel Miami, these are fairs I've never been to.
He decided to collect. I somehow found out two years ago that I was collecting art when I had been buying for 8 years and collecting for two years.

The similarities are, we both blog and both collect and enjoy it.

Tomorrow I will go to my first foreign ArtFair. Art Brussels is just abroad, someone from my MFAC students will join me to the always surprising Belgians. Let's see what happens.

again housekeeping, with pictures

In a previous post about housekeeping I promised pictures from the almost 3d-objects from Boukje Janssen.

Here they are. You really need to enlarge the to see the needles in the eye and the needle which keeps the "u" in place from. "Is there anything we..."
The last picture is the photograph on a standardized spot in my living room. usually the works of art which are hanging here are larger.

next purchase or dialogue

The same day I went to AFH (see previous post) I had to go on in a high pace to Amsterdam. (where else) I'd got an invite from Isolde,(no Tristan around)who made an exhibit together with nine other artists who took a course as starting curator. As a curator you must be able to make exhibitions so they created this trial as their course-project. As artists they had plenty of art available. So they could concentrate on the exhibit itself.
All these artists are young, not long time away from the academy and eager to show their own taste of creation. The result was a very pioneering, hard to grasp, out-of the box art. The exhibition was not located, like AFH, in a hallway in an industrial zone kilometers far from the city centre. It was next to heart of the city centre of Amsterdam in a house which the inhabitant had transformed into an exhibition space. It couldn't be further from AFH metaphorically speaking.
The result I bought a picture. I had only a low resolution jpeg, but I replaced it by a better one. In the picture you see a frame. I actually bought the picture framed in the same frame which is in the picture. It shows that the picture isn't disconnected from the real life. The frame in the real world frames the picture and within the picture the same frame frames a piece of the picture. This inner outer world connection is enhanced by the socket which is just in the upper right corner of the picture. Off course this socket is there on purpose. It's easier to leave the socket out of the view than to show the socket in that precise corner. This creates a down-to-eart approach: Isolde created a picture from a woman lying in a pink dress under a frame flat on the ground, but keep in my mind this picture was taken in a place where sometimes people need a light or to hoover so there is also a socket in the wall.

Art Antiques Fair Den Bosch

This Sunday I went to a fair I'd never gone before Art and Antiques Fair Den Bosch.

My conclusion: It wasn't a complete waste of time.

That is not a very positive remark. But I am not very positive. Art and Antiques Fair Den Bosch(in short AFH) is a pale shadow of a fair like Primavera. AFH is an old fair established in 1967 but its glance is fading. The antiques are now being replaced by contemporary art to attract younger visitors. As a young visitor (really 36 and still young) I skipped all Antiques, glanced a few times over the modern art and had a thorough look at the contemporary art. I actually saw four booths with nice art. None of them however had any pioneering art. No Tinkerbel here, this was art for the living room to replace the reproduction from Monet above the couch. Not boring, but not shocking either. As for the children's room of waiting room. Nice to look it, but in no way confronting or with a second layer. To see what I mean a nice picture from Willy Rojas. Very nice for a children's room who will enjoy it. But it cannot keep my mind busy for more than 10 seconds.

delivery twice

About a week ago I blogged that I bought a painting from Irina Babiouk. This painting was delivered this Thursday by courier. Happily I unpacked it. For the major part it was as I expected.
However I saw one minute black streak of paint. Really minute, but it was an eye catcher and distracted me from the essence of the painting itself. No sulking for me however I sent an e-mail to Irina and explained the problem. A day later she offered to correct the painting and yesterday she did. So within two days the problem was over. Below you see twice the painting. One time with and one time without the black streak.

just another day at the office

So what does a collector do on a quiet Wednesday. Due to circumstances I was early away from work. So I went to the inner city of Utrecht.
At first I bought the book Puur (pure) from Mery dedicated to her project of photographing Teenage mothers.
Next I bought some white gloves to handle my art more cautiously. Some works form Boukje Janssen I recently bought, require more subtlety on handling.
After that I went to Flatland gallery to see their exhibition. It was a nice exhibition in a very nice building. I'd actually never been to that gallery. They focus on photography which I like but their aim is a little bit too high for my budget. After that I went to a second hand bookshop and bought an old catalogue from Sotheby's "photographs from the Bert Hartkamp collection" It gives a nice overview for the contemporary photography.
Finally I got home and found a letter from gallery Smarius. They sent me a special guest badge for the fair Art Amsterdam, so I can enter the preview and enter during this fair whenever I like for free.

House keeping or After Sales 2

So Easter is almost over. I used some time to add labels, probably too many, to all my posts. To the right you can see them all and search posts which have the label.

Next to housekeeping of my blog I did some house keeping of my works of art too. I hung two works of Boukje Janssen. These are some out of the ordinary. So I couldn't use my usual arrangements. One is a necklace with the text "is there something we should know" in mirror image. It is very light and very vulnerable. It needs three pins to hang it on the wall. So I put it on a place out of the way of draught. And a place I could hammer three pins in the wall. One letter the "u" turned 90 degrees so I had to keep it in place by a broken off pin.

The other one is mostly black velvet with black pins pointing outwards. It's almost impossible to see the pins because of the same color. So this one I had to put on a quiet spot where now one accidentally could be hurt. After all art belongs on eye height. And eyes and pins don't mix together. I put it in place by hammering 8 black pins around it. So now a a work of art mainly consisting of black velvet and black pins is kept in place by black pins.

The battery from my mobile phone is empty so I cannot take pictures. They will come later.

Lost and found

In a previous post I was looking for the creator of a work of art from which I knew the first name. "Cathalijne"
That one was identified by Sanneke as a work from Cathalijne van Gent, which she confirmed.

Now it is more difficult. These works below I know nothing from except that I bought them on kunstveilingazie.nl. This was an online benefit auction for aiding the victims from the tsunami that struck the Asian coast in 2005.

Who recognises these? The cat is on canvas and about a square meter. The woman is about 40 x 50 centimeters.

Stop making sense

Stop making sense is the title of an exhibition I got an invite for. The exhibition is just a weekend in place. And is of course in Amsterdam. I got the invite because I am in contact with one of the artists. Isolde Woudstra is a fashion photographer with autonomous traits or the other way around: an autonomous photographer with fashion traits. (As long as the clothes do not consist of leather or fur.)
Below you see the first photo I bought from her. "My favourite sweater"



I'm sorry for the Americans who read my blog. But at school in the Netherlands we learn the UK-version of English. So it is favourite not favorite.

After sales

I have said earlier on this blog that most artists don't think commercially. So if anything happens that contradicts this believe I blog it.

Like I said earlier I bought 4 works from Boukje Janssen. I tried to hang one of them on my wall. But I missed the means to hang it from.
I had seen it hanging in Rotterdam and I saw no traces that anything was removed from the back. So I wrote an e-mail. Which said in short "Help I'm confused." Boukje replied that black pins had kept it in place and she offered to send some.

Below you see the intermediate results.

Nice feature. These same pins are also in the piece of art I want to hang on my wall. However in this case some are pointing out... Ouch!


PS I added Lilith and Liesje Reyskens to my watch list and removed Hellen van Meene like I feared I would.

Hear, hear... latest purchase

Like I wrote in my previous post. Last week I purchased a small work of art.
This time I didn't buy it through a benefit auction. I bought it at a gallery. The gallery Artolive is physically based in the culture park "Westergasfabriek" in Amsterdam. However that is not really important. Its virtual base is far more important. It's an online gallery with over 60,000 pieces of art. I often use it as a kind of database. I estimate that about 30 percent from the less known Dutch artists can be found on Artolive. And sometimes I find pretty things. Although pretty is in this case not the right adjective. Eerie is more in place.
I bought this work from Irina Babiouk. She was born in Russia. Nowadays she lives in the Netherlands. She graduated this year from art school. (St. Joost)

The work is called "Ear" and this is her description:
"All of the human body are energy nodes. A paranormal woman once told me that the ear is comparable to the foetus. As vulnerable and as source... puncture this with piercings and the energy nodes are wounded which are vital for the foetus."

Amsterdam

For 15 years I've been living in Eindhoven. There goes the proverb "The only good thing in Amsterdam is the train back to Eindhoven." Nowadays I live in Utrecht, which is 80 kilometers closer to Amsterdam. Utrecht even looks like Amsterdam. An overcrowded city center. Parking problems combined with huge parking costs. Entering the city center by car without a TomTom or ten years experience is impossible. On the positive side. Because of the crowd everything is always happening. There are beautiful canals. The ancient city center has lovely buildings. By foot or bike you can reach any destination within 10 minutes.
The main difference between Utrecht and Amsterdan is, that Amsterdam is about three times as large. Both city center and city.

I had a meeting in Amsterdam for "My first art collection" We discussed how a gallery owner makes his prices and how taxes mingle with art. The latter one was discussed with Sigrid Hemels lecturer at Leiden University. She wrote a Dutch book for non-tax lawyers about that subject.

After the meeting being in Amsterdam I decided to go to the Melkweg for the exposition Pure from Mery I previously wrote about.
The exposition was overwhelming. I usually don't see many pregnant women. I never see them nude and I never ever saw 75 together in one building. Most amazing was that Mery was capable of showing each woman as an individual. All pictures were really different. I am happy to own two of these pictures.
A print 140 x 90 cm is 1000 euros one size smaller is 650 euros and 40 x 55 cm is just 250 euros.

Walking from the gallery "Serieuze zaken" to the Melkweg I encountered about 4 galleries which I all entered and where I studied the works of art.

After that I went to gallery RonMandos at the Prinsengracht. I encountered again about 4 galleries which I entered and where I studied the art.
At Ronmandos I was amazed about the huge gallery, which was just exhibiting two artists. I had a nice chat with the two employees and the quality was pretty high although not my collector's taste.

Now it was rather late so I just visited two unplanned galleries and went to "Eduard Planting fine art photography"
I saw beautiful pictures there and two very scary pictures. Loretta Lux showed these two.
Have a close watch to see WHY they're so scary.

Then I finally got lost towards Koch en Bosch That gallery I bought my works form Marjo van den Boomen. (having a baby so not on the art mood right now) My remarks about this exposition won't do it justice. The artist "mijn schatje" is a girl and she is mainly bought by girls.
Have a look at the picture. In an edition of 70 it is just 95 euros, Which I consider a bargain. All other works are under 1000 euros as well. If you anywhere like this get your work of art.

I really have to admit. Amsterdam is amazing with regard to the amount and quality of galleries. Probably half of all the galleries in the Netherlands are in Amsterdam. I just walked through a part of Amsterdam and saw dozens of interesting galleries.
Content I took the train back to Utrecht. Not the only good thing but still the best.


PS I bought a work of art yesterday night and I am really content about it.
Close visitors have seen that I moved one artist from "watching" to "in collection"
More Later.

more lists

In a previous post I wrote about my two lists of artists. The list with artists I own works from and the watch list. The latter consist of artists I think are interesting to buy work from, but I haven't done so. You can find those lists at the right hand side of my blog.
A few days ago I added a third list, the alas list. These are artists I like but won't buy work from. There are plenty of reasons I don't put them on my watch list. The main reason is I want to keep my watch list small. Because the supply of art is huge I can maintain a high standard. Because I have a third list I won't "lose" the artist but can still reconsider her position. The price is an important factor in my considerations. I just decided to put Erwin Olaf on my alas list. He was on my watch list, although in group E. I like his work, but he is way too expensive. I'm afraid Hellen van Meene and Carla van de Puttelaar will leave the same way. Remarkable is that they all are represented (or in stock) by the Utrecht-based Flatland gallery. For me the Gallery out priced itself. However there are many collector with much deeper pockets than mine. So Flatland won't need my purchases. While writing this I realised one of my guiding principles. Because I like collecting and buying art I don't want to spend my yearly budget for a few works. I want to buy many works and the only way to collect this way is by buying many cheaper works.
This finally takes me to my fifth list. (My fourth list is still work in progress)
On this list I put the specific works of art I want to buy. This is less intuitive way of buying art then I'm used to, but this is the only way to more or less structure my collecting. After 36 year I got to know myself. I like too many thins so must force myself to enforce my own collecting policy.
There are 6 works of art on my want list. Three of them are form Marije Arends (Arends means "from the eagle")I just own now one picture from her, which shows in this post.

Collecting

Most of my art I bought on intuition. But I was soon aware that buying art from the same artists added value to my collection. (Although I wasn't aware I was collecting) That's why I sometimes bought works, which I would never have bought if they were single. The body of works of an artist sometimes demands to buy it too. This work is from Janneke Sprenkels from whom I own a lot of works. I wouldn't have bought it If wasn't part of the body of works. But now I own and sometimes display it. I've started to appreciate it more and more. Have a look for yourself and you could perhaps compare it with "feeling blue"

Catalogue (wip 2)

I'm still trying to catalogue all my works of art. Before I collected art, I bought irregular but frequently. I jotted nothing down about the works I bought and that's a pity because now I have lots of difficulties to try to find out whom I bought work from and if I know from whom, who she is.

I've got two examples. The first one is Han Mol. I own a print of him. These prints were made to raise money for TAC (Temporary Art Centre)in Eindhoven. The print is clearly signed so I know his name. But that's really all I know. Googling had no real effect. So I'm gonna ask some people. Maybe they still have information.

In the Tac I really started to collect (at first without being aware of this) and that is where I bought this work (see picture) It's a picture in a small wooden box (15cm x 15cm) and signed "Cathalijne" That's all I know....
It can be worse, next week I'll show some works from someone I don't have a clue who he is.