Rutger Emmelkamp
20 Jan - 24 Feb 2007
RUTGER EMMELKAMP
"Nulla est retentio"
The artist's vocation is anything but simple - as many thinkers have observed over the centuries. You have to have a tremendous belief in yourself, besides which you need the strength to allow things to flow. Walter Benjamin even went so far, in his discussion of Charles Baudelaire, as to compare the creation of a work of art to a duel. A duel between the inner and outer world, between the eternal and the contemporary - between the artist and himself. Besides the internal conflict of creation, the artist stands face to face with the material. The form that the material takes is rarely what the artist had envisaged. In this duel, the artist's will is pitted against the will of the material.
Rutger Emmelkamp is acutely conscious of the field of tension that generates art - and of the need for it. His work is often created out of unexpected relationships. These are frequently relationships between form and idea, text and image. Some of his works are inspired by a book or a theory. And sometimes Emmelkamp creates something exclusively from the material, adding words later. But word and image rarely 'gel' completely. The conflict situation endures.
The artworks of Rutger Emmelkamp are small and refined - comparable to coins or jewels - but possess a force transcending their size. His creations are enormously labour-intensive, and this energy is tangible. Casts of moulds he has cultivated himself, finely applied gold leaf or pieces of extremely finely carved ivory - dozens of attempts are required before the material is finally compelled in the direction that Emmelkamp has in mind - sometimes resulting in a gift; something unexpectedly marvellous.
Emmelkamp places his creations in a new context, and remains aware of their potential for entering into other relationships and hence acquiring different meanings. In the exhibition Nulla est Retentio, each object's existence is predicated on that of another object. The tiny works are placed in twos in little boxes that are themselves presented as exhibits. The two works are not polar opposites, but neither are they of the same type. Their dialogue shapes the works and gives them meaning. Emmelkamp tries to make the conflict that brings forth a work visible; he tries to display his own split nature.
Nulla est Retentio is a wonderful slip of the tongue by Don Quixote's 'sidekick' Sancho Panchez. Instead of Nulla est Redemptio - as in Quia in Inferno Nulla est Redemptio (for those in Hell there is no redemption) - he says the exact opposite (for those in Hell, anything goes), in which he sees a kind of redemption in rulelessness, godlessness. In short, Man himself becomes the creator, but this means that nothing is fixed. Rutger Emmelkamp undermines his status as autonomous creator, but also the status of his exhibits as independent artworks. All the works are placed in conflict with one another, but without any dialectic and therefore without a synthesis. This dialogue offers not redemption but a broadening-out.
[Laura van Grinsven]
© Rutger Emmelkamp
"Nulla est retentio"
The artist's vocation is anything but simple - as many thinkers have observed over the centuries. You have to have a tremendous belief in yourself, besides which you need the strength to allow things to flow. Walter Benjamin even went so far, in his discussion of Charles Baudelaire, as to compare the creation of a work of art to a duel. A duel between the inner and outer world, between the eternal and the contemporary - between the artist and himself. Besides the internal conflict of creation, the artist stands face to face with the material. The form that the material takes is rarely what the artist had envisaged. In this duel, the artist's will is pitted against the will of the material.
Rutger Emmelkamp is acutely conscious of the field of tension that generates art - and of the need for it. His work is often created out of unexpected relationships. These are frequently relationships between form and idea, text and image. Some of his works are inspired by a book or a theory. And sometimes Emmelkamp creates something exclusively from the material, adding words later. But word and image rarely 'gel' completely. The conflict situation endures.
The artworks of Rutger Emmelkamp are small and refined - comparable to coins or jewels - but possess a force transcending their size. His creations are enormously labour-intensive, and this energy is tangible. Casts of moulds he has cultivated himself, finely applied gold leaf or pieces of extremely finely carved ivory - dozens of attempts are required before the material is finally compelled in the direction that Emmelkamp has in mind - sometimes resulting in a gift; something unexpectedly marvellous.
Emmelkamp places his creations in a new context, and remains aware of their potential for entering into other relationships and hence acquiring different meanings. In the exhibition Nulla est Retentio, each object's existence is predicated on that of another object. The tiny works are placed in twos in little boxes that are themselves presented as exhibits. The two works are not polar opposites, but neither are they of the same type. Their dialogue shapes the works and gives them meaning. Emmelkamp tries to make the conflict that brings forth a work visible; he tries to display his own split nature.
Nulla est Retentio is a wonderful slip of the tongue by Don Quixote's 'sidekick' Sancho Panchez. Instead of Nulla est Redemptio - as in Quia in Inferno Nulla est Redemptio (for those in Hell there is no redemption) - he says the exact opposite (for those in Hell, anything goes), in which he sees a kind of redemption in rulelessness, godlessness. In short, Man himself becomes the creator, but this means that nothing is fixed. Rutger Emmelkamp undermines his status as autonomous creator, but also the status of his exhibits as independent artworks. All the works are placed in conflict with one another, but without any dialectic and therefore without a synthesis. This dialogue offers not redemption but a broadening-out.
[Laura van Grinsven]
© Rutger Emmelkamp