Education
The Rotterdam visual artist, Jochem Rotteveel describes himself as a painter, who utilises special materials: adhesive foil and tape. For more than ten years, these materials have served as Rotteveels ‘paintbrush’ and ‘paint’ as he continually refines his technique with each new work.
Represented by: Galerie Bart (Amsterdam), Gärna Art Gallery (Madrid).
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Rotteveel feels connected with hard-edge and colourfield painters Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondriaan, Peter Halley and Ellsworth Kelly. But also with colorists Josef Albers, Vincent van Gogh, Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Henry Matisse, and Hella Jongerius. In the tradition of Robert Rauschenberg and Isa Genzken, Rotteveel approaches their material in the conviction that every type of material could be appropriate for art, as long as it is able to surprise the artist.
‘Foil paintings’ are characteristic of Jochem Rotteveel’s works: panels covered with shiny, pleated pieces of adhesive foil in striking colour combinations. With foil and tape, Jochem Rotteveel investigates several boundaries. By folding the foil, they add volume onto flat surfaces, stretching the boundary between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional. The material becomes pasty but does not reveal its origins. The spectator does not know whether it is metal, plastic, or ceramic.
Rotteveel is interested in investigating the effects of colour, interrogating in their works questions such as ‘how do you evoke feelings by combining colours?’ Although there is often no hidden message behind the colour combinations in Rotteveel’s works, the artist does consider the psychological dimensions of colours and the feelings they evoke.
As Rotteveel does not physically blend colours, they aim to blend the colours optically. By following the creases, the viewer blends the colours in each work optically. Whether the colours lie in line with each other or clash, they always teach the viewer something new about themselves and each other. On their works on dibond panel, Rotteveel folds the foil around the edges of the panel. This raises the question: where does the work stop and where does the carrier start? Is there even a front and a back?
Jochem Rotteveel works on dibond panels but also creates large murals. The murals address all the questions raised above yet add another question around eternity and value, since all murals are temporary. After each exhibition, they are taken down and the only image that remains is the image inside the viewer’s head. These murals make a statement, to prove that art should not necessarily hold eternal value, for the real value of art lies in the moment of experience.
In his latest project, Rotteveel collaborated with the fashion designer, Thomas Vermeer. Knowledgeable in the properties of fabric, Vermeer remained crucial to the realisation of Rotteveel’s visions of colour work. The works produced by the pair are provocative and intriguing in their employment of colour, shapes, material, and texture. Showcased at Galerie Bart, Amsterdam, the exhibition is lively and vivid to visitors’ eyes.
‘I work according to hard-edge painting, painting abstract areas of colour, not with paint but with adhesive foil. When you paint areas of colour, and especially when you work with foils – you can’t mix or blend colours. The relationship between the colour area is therefore very important, and I started to delve more and more into that.’
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