24 Mar 11

In Caochangdi art galleries are what we call museums over here.
The scale of the white cube galleries is huge and a lot of chinese artists work pretty big also. I visited some studios in the district and it didn’t surprise me to see that they were also gigantic. There’s a rather lucky group of artists who seem to do pretty well.

I visited Chambers Fine Art gallery (Beijing) and because some things get lost in translation I was first under the impression the burned room was an art piece. It turned out that Ye Nan who is working with phosphorous hand-made paper tried to put the phosphor directly onto the wall which as you can see turned out pretty bad. The room burned down and nearly the rest of the gallery also.

Picture of a studio in Caochangdi (I’m sorry I have forgotten the name of the artist).
Picture of the burned room in Chambers Fine Art gallery.

07 Mar 11

When looking through old family pics I came across these. Postcards my grandpa and grandma send from their trips. My mom has saved them. They are from Austria, Swiss and of course from Italy from the time they met the pope.
I noticed that on the back they say only:
mom & dad, Jan & Gretha, J Smeets-Schobbe (their surnames) or grandpa & grandma. That’s it, no descriptions of their travels. It got me thinking and in fact I remember my grandparents being quiet and patient people. Totally unlike the rest of my family!

03 Feb 11

I always love things that come to existence when working on my projects. Sometimes I put so much effort to make things work but when taking 10 steps backwards I find perfection is just in front of me. You just have to look carefully.

I’ve got this badass printer with whom I always was very good friends. But last week something evil crawled into it and now it doesn’t print things centered anymore. I tried a zillion different settings, nothing worked. So now I adjust al my prints in Photoshop a few mm. Somehow the margin is not always the same. Isn’t that weird?
When busy making test prints on old purple paper I saw these beautiful random compositions were born.

11 Jan 11

This friday FNNNN join forces again behind the decks. We’ll start at 21.00 hrs.

Flyer by the lovely Nicole Martens

10 Jan 11

Last week while digging in my archives I discovered this picture I took 5 years ago. The shape of the house still keeps fascinating me.