ART BY Jeroen Witvliet      artist cv   Untitled #378A untitled #279 Untitled #364       The Crossing In search for a place to be at place. My work deals with finding a way to discover oneself in a world which does not seem to have the awareness as a single identity has. The journey is sometimes represented by a road in an isolated landscape. It could be at the beginning, half way or even at the end of the journey, facing yet another road, another beginning. Another road to be taken to understand one's own identity. A road in a bare landscape, no objects to be named. No distraction other than the journey itself. Left without a name one needs to find its own identity within itself. Symbols do occur, time and memory represented by Chronos' egg. Fire, the destruction of a world. The end of an era. The landscape is black, burned. Material seems to be destroyed. Maybe the landscape represents the old world. Scarred through time by the acts of men, leaving the landscape as a silent witness. Poles at the side of the road where once the fence was. The fence to guide, the fence to keep the ones inside who where considered different, dangerous. Who needed to be forgotten by the majority? A decision made by a few, executed by many. An empty landscape with no roads, no time, as in the beginning. But also as in the end. Waiting to be discovered on yet another journey. ………………………… In my artwork it is through the landscape that I am trying to find some answers. Answers on the questions I have about history and the direction I am travelling in. The direction in which we as individuals are travelling. In my later work I seem to be dealing more with my recent immigration into Canada. Most of these works (from October 97" on ) are based on the change of landscape but also on the similarities I see. Fire represents for me the world I left behind, but also stands for my decision to leave this (old) world. A short journey to Ontario gave me the strong visuals I was looking for. ………………………… My work as a painter has revolved around the questioning of the communicative possibilities of painting. By exploring and experimenting with materials, subject matter and conceptualization, I try to question the acceptance of painting as a visual, communicative tool. Graphic use of images related to world events and world history, different techniques dealing with the materiality of paint, use of categorizable styles such as landscape painting, abstraction and the use of narrative all form part of this investigation. A painting is first and foremost an abstraction, a formalized visual, and when no longer in sight anymore, capable of becoming a pure mental image. The memory of the work lingers on and can, overtime reshape the first impression to become a fully altered 'after image' of the first encounter. I try to engage this process in my painting practice. For me paint is both materiality and ghost like lingering. I engage in transforming suspended pigment into a reactionary statement. A statement informed by the world around me, its politics, its forgetting. A statement informed as well by Art history, emotion and the daily bombardment of 'other' visuals.