I graduated in 1994 on autonomous sculpting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Since then I am working as an artist.
On sculpting:
My work shows things that are slightly uncomfortable. It’s about moments you don’t completely understand, or moments when something is painful. I don’t mean to shock or to confront, just for the sake of confrontation. Rather, my work presents a tactile, sensual and seductive way to create order and to make incomprehensible emotions and contradictions visible.
The process I use for making my sculptures are a result of my investigations in bodies, bats and insects: I draw a pattern and sew this together in neoprene fabric. Plaster is then poured into this neoprene model. Once it hardens, the neoprene fabric is partially pulled off. The model and the process of casting actually become part of the sculpture. Sometimes I also add other materials or fabric to it.
I treat my works as arrangements. Sometimes it’s necessary to remove, hide or fade certain parts to emphasize the vulnerability of the body in the sculpture. The outcome is a sculpture which seems to exist on its own. A new creature emerges, exposed, but at the same time concealed from its surroundings.
My sculptures represent touch, sensuality and imperfection which needs to be protected. I hide my vulnerabilities and emotions in my sculptures.
On painting:
While driving in my car I often take photographs.
Empty roads, the endless views and the never ending horizon. Through the frame of the windscreen I see the horizon in the middle, the sky above and the road below.
Literally and figuratively I drive towards a vanishing point. The ´non-moment´. This non-moment I try to register on two pieces of transparent fabric stitched together with a seam in the middle that acts as a horizon.
This material is partly see-through. The paint is layered on top of the fabric. Sometimes parts of the framework appear through the transparent fabric. The fabric becomes even more transparent because of the oxalic oil I use to prepare the fabric; this material also serves as the base for the oil-paint.
For me, paint is just coloured matter; the backside of the transparent cloth is just as important to the painting as the front.
Photography helps me to freeze the fast changing landscape that I see as I speed by in my car. With oil-paint I convert the dynamic of this snapshot onto the transparent fabric.
Brochure:
SuzannedeGraaf-sculptures and paintings 2010-2015