The Calligrapher  of The Quay Brothers is a royal calligrapher who wants to sign a letter, but like in the Nose story of Gogol, his hand takes a life of its own. The hand together with the pen multiple itself eight times and they start to draw all on the same time on paper. The eight hands holding the eight pens create a wing for the calligrapher  so he will be able to fly to his next dream.  

Entering the room where Thomas van Linge installed his work was a great surprise: this installation filled the space, inviting the visitor to enter the room and to walk around it and to discover how different it looks from each angle. The dodecahedron (new word I just learned!) was hanging on the black elastic rubbers in nonchalant, like waiting that someone will start to sing lullaby for him. With simple construction, simple materials and two colors the artist created a splendid total experience.

Artist Emile Zile says about himself: “I am a monk. I am a tourist. Within the street I see the stage for every human conflict and negotiation”. In his film Tak Bat you could really see it while he captures the daily ritual of giving food to the Buddhist monks in Seoul. This ritual created others:  a ritual of tourism, a ritual of poor children looking for food, a ritual of locals who watching all rituals etc.  The artist identifies himself with all of them in such a way,  that none of them becomes  more important and no one becomes exotic.  

Ieva Misevičiūtė made this duo figures which are attracting and repelling on same time, after a story of a Japanese Noh theater dancer.  This dancer creates  such a tension with his performances that the audiences seems to feel his body duplicating itself during performances. These two not  very clear creatures stare at me without eyes, were standing in a such a position that they made me wanting to touch there slippery, smooth skin while saying:  icky.

I was wandering between three out of four Prix de Rome nomination. The forth work  was screening every hour and I couldn’t enter. I saw three different works from three different artists. Ola Vasiljeva was one of them, mixing sculpture together  with installation and video art, beautiful installed in the space. When I left  De Apple, I had the feeling that all those works were the result of intensive research, deep analysis and thinking,   with a very esthetic result. Even the shadows of the pieces were designed. I must say, I missed some sentimentalism, emotion, feelings and at least a bit of paranoia. NADA

This touching video located above archeological sculptures, “complete” the one  in the center who misses her head. Artist Pedro Costa shows in his work the face of a girl he filmed for a while in Lisbon, a girl that lived a tough life between drugs and poverty. Here in the museum she attracted my attention with her expressive face. Her expression refutes the sculptures next to her that represent wealth, luxury and status, all what only archeological sculptures mostly have along their existence.

This amazing  real size maquette build on scale 1:1 of the Krefeld Golf Club, was designed  by  Mies van der Rohe  and is there in the middle of a field.  It's done so perfect, hard to believe it was installed temporary : only for six months. From every side you could see the  perfect  proportions,  proportions which give much  respect the one who is inside and to the one who walks outside.  With this model, Mies van der Rohe’s  idea about vertical and horizontal lines that hold a complete building, has been realized  .

Marijn van Kreij talked about his work and quoted Ad Reinhardt (I think) saying: each painter should have his own black square. He mentioned Kazimir Malevich and others who painted for a while black squares. Van Kreij talked about his black square as it is for him the origin of refinement. It sounds, like a black hole, black square can be the beginning and the end of everything .

The sound track of the video art work envelopes you the minute you enter into the space. You hear someone talking and it feels like he talks to you personally. The sound becomes the protagonist in the late works of Ed Atkins. He combines it together with processed  familiar objects  and creates an imaginary world. More than that, he creates an imaginary relationship between the artist and the spectator.

While I was wondering in the museum entrance I entered by coincidence this space. For few minutes I felt like Alice in Wonderland. In the beginning of her journy she falls through a kind of tunnel loosing gravity and any sense of time and place. I felt the same , walking through this installation by Oscar Tuazon. He created by vertical and horizontal white boards and black lines a Wonderland, a place where l lost my sense of time and place.

Even without the reflection of the spot light in the photograph the trees look shining. The trees of Awoiska van der Molen freeze a moment. Not just because this is the essence of photography, but also because the lighted parts seem to look like they are covered with ice. It feels cold, it feels as if the artist took distance and has no sentiments to the objects. She, van der Molen, was there to create and capture this moment.

I was visiting Andrei Roiter in his Amsterdam studio. He told about his source of inspiration and how he combines  the classical way he learned  to work with contemporary media. He explained in detail the way he likes to work with different materials: to cast them , to create sculptures with them, and to make drawings  that show the changing texture.  I was most fascinated by the shelves  at the back of the studio covered with small sketches and ideas for the coming works. This small scale shows the various  materials  and the ideas of the artist.

In this video work of Irina Birger people are dancing in the park. It is a common phenomenon seen in many parks or squares  in China. The man at the center, dancing alone, concentrated on his own movements and follows the melodies. The artist \ the camera follows his movements. Did he become the protagonist because he dances alone? In a society that suppresses the  individual, in a society which decides about the outfit and hairstyle of the people, dancing alone in the park is, without any doubt, a brave statement.

The doubt is so clear in this Incredulity of Thomas, I myself, came near to see the wound, only in my case I could not touch it.  Hendrick ter Brugghen, like others before, draw St. Thomas,  pushing his finger into the wound,  when he had doubt about the miracle of the resurrected  Jesus.  Sometime a miracle is in front of us and remains  hard to believe, maybe we only need to push our finger to the open wound to see if it is real.

These casted faces, from about 100 years ago,looked to me first as death masks. The title under them says: they were done by the  anthropologist J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan as part of his research into the physical characteristics of the human races in the Nias islands. I was wondering  why he had to sail to the edge of  Dutch East Indies to make his research about human races while he could examine anthropology much closer, such as in The Netherlands.

Walking through the exhibition “Curiosity” made me realize that understanding nature is the main reason for curiosity . A long the centuries man tried to analyze and at the same time to change what he found in the nature.  This work of Thomas Grünfeld made me smile and at the same time terrified – how far we can go with changing the nature?

Maybe  because Umrao Singh Sher-Gil was an amateur  photographer and maybe because he lived in between two centuries: the 19th and the 20thy, moving between two very different countries: Hungary and India, Sher-Gil posed himself the way he did in this self-portrait. Seems to me he ignored the conventional way to show an Indian’s portret, and did not repeat what was accepted in the photography scene of the west. More of these self-portraits and family photos you can find in his family archive.  As in this one,  you can see, how his self-determination is so uniqe also for these days.   

I entered curious to the exhibition of known Yayoi Kusama. It took me only few minutes to feel that even my soul is covered with her famous polka dots. I found that her drawings have much more depth than just those dots, and her installations have much more meaning; like this one. In a field of uncooked pasta, penises in different sizes, some erected and some after, scattered in female shoes. Somehow it looks as if the penises are a bit lost, and dependent on these shoes to find their way.

I guess the women in this photo might be relatives or know each other somehow.  I even guess that they might know the artist herself. Did Risja Marie attach the buttons on their faces so we cannot recognize them? Or maybe she doesn't want them to stare at her?

With this work of Sultana Haukim I liked the most the situation I could see myself in the mirror between the two spread legs. Mostly this vulgar pose could make me angry, but  somehow, this piece showed the humor side of this position or maybe because of its title: “ where we do we come from?”

Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. Graduation exhibition. Eveline Vondeling took the process on “How to become a Barbarian” very serious: she combined sound tracks, performance, installation, text, video art work and even fashion design in her work.  As a barbarian myself I can say, It takes a lot of effort to become one.
The need of understanding things by categorizing is a known way. Like Kader Attia in the last Documenta, also here the artist distributes plenty of objects on shelves and pedestals, putting in order different materials to help the non- barbarian viewer, all visitors of the graduation exhibition,  to understand better “How to become a Barbarian”.

Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. Graduation exhibition. Half dripping figures made by  Maroesjka  Verhagen standing or sitting in the room. They  look as if they just were taken out from mole in the middle of the casting processes. I could see how they try to look frightening.  Actually only this one was really convincing me,  because when you cannot see the full figure becomes the most  threatening one.

I see a series of big black and white photographs. In some of them the black changed gradually to brown. The lines of the folding are very clear and give the feeling like someone just took it out from the drawer to show us. Only in this case, it seems like, the photographs were stored with a lot of scrap. Looking carefully to the details of Anton Heyboer’s work and after reading about him, you realize how the photographs reflect the chaos of his way of life.

As you can find in the prints of Piranesi, maybe, but only maybe,  in distance of 2000 years, ruins look romantic.

In Roma they have the Sistine Chapel but we have here `Forever`, from Ai Weiwei. The artist build  in the KunstKapel,  under the only source of day light, a site specific version  of his known work. The brilliant bicycle chapel.  Like the Sistine Chapel, every viewer has his own interpretation for the installation. Some relate it to the environment, an awareness for pollution and some see it as a symbol of the Dutch idol par excellence: the bicycle.

This painting hangs in the museum as part of  the permanent exhibition. Here you see part of triptych which Peter van Dongen depicting a working day in the port. Although he relate it to the connections between the Netherlands with the colonies in the past, there is a strong Deja-vu with this scene; dark people led by not dark guards to an unknown destination.

I was standing in front of a half built room with this table and some photos hanging on the walls, a work done by the Russian artist Roman Sakin. I was wondering if I should wait for a few more minutes, when maybe the architectural figures will join arms and start dancing the Kazacho in a circle. It was nice to see that the Suprematismstill exists and… does have a sense of humor.

In the main gallery of the museum between many other works that have just arrived from Russia stands the work: “Jupiter’s Tomb, Reconstruction of an architect model from 1927”, done in 2003 by Yuri Avvakumov. I saw the little mannequin hanging on the swing, balancing the model. After I read the title of the work: “Tribute to all artists of the world and everyone who knows me”.I asked myself if it is a metaphor about the artist himself.

- The photographers who “had come to a dead end in Western art and wanted to visit the other side”

- The one who wrote the exhibition text telling about the: “journey to ‘the end of the earth’”, visiting isolated places said: “(…)at least a three-day journey from the ‘civilized world’”.

- The people who decide to have this exhibition in the museum

I think, people who are doing such a show and writing such a text are on the edge of being racist. I wondered if they might be looking at things like long ago, when white males were traveling to observe and take photos of whoever is not white males and calling their work ‘anthropological research in a not civilized world’.

It can be said that for Juanma Gonzalez a shoe is whole world or maybe the sole is a whole world. After he changed from been a driver to become a cobbler, fascinated by the different materials he worked with, he looked for a different way to use them. As you can see here he preferred the sole, the shoe bottom to work with. At this hidden part of the shoe he creates secret imaginary world.

In this dense drawing the artist Pushwagner creates a world which is almost like the world we live in:  the high buildings which hide the sun and the roads packed with cars. A congested situation painted in soft monotonous colors. Through the poker faces of the drivers, Pushwagner emphasizes a No Way Out atmosphere.

Jean Tinguely is known for his kinetic sculpture, the ones that shakes and make noise. With this work  it appears as if Tinguely drew lines through the air. In this piece the objects are tied in together by a set of juxtaposed wheels, connecting disused dishes, helmet, wires and other people leftovers. All together his work develops into a beautiful poetic drawing in the room.

Castrum Peregrini Amsterdam. It is known that what protects you at the same time may imprison you. On the left side of her drawing “Tzigane” (detail) Jasmijn Visser started with cubes and simple forms. Gradually the forms develop into cages. Than different ways to escape are added to them, such as stairs and ramps. In the end of the drawing on the right side, when it is not clear anymore if you can get in or have to run out, all collapses into an hurricane of white red band.

The artist Joseph Semach deals in many of his works with contradictions, also in this one. With the repeating reflection in a glass box, divided in the middle with other glass appeared these two words: OPEN and Close. You don’t know what is where. What I liked the most is that both are together in same place like saying sometimes what seems open can be at the same time be closed and the contrary of it.

This oil painting of Gustave Caillebotte is combined beautifully in the exhibition together with photographs. More than the workers posture, the lightentering forthfully and the broad space create the feeling of a very realistic scene. One we would say about: it looks like a photo.

Corner of Shomrei Emunim street  and Shivtei Israel street,  where all different edges of Jerusalem meet. It is midday and people are running to work and children are playing in the streets. There in front of a shop I saw these colorful frames. All for sale, all in different sizes. Sometimes life looks so simple; you need only to decide about the kind of frame and the size. Nice if by chance you have something to put in.

I was looking at Khader Oshah’s Pieta, remembering someone said not every political art work is a good art work but a good art work is always a political one.
I don’t know how much the artist wanted to have a political statement in this work. In any case for me, here, the mother with this gesture is the mother of all mothers.

I walked around the building about 40 min looking for the entrance:  from the street the building looks like any other building which is going to be demolished soon: broken glass, half falling walls and dark squares instead of windows. Nothing alludes to what you get inside: the moment  I stepped inside I was surrounded by these layers of waste and leftover materials, laying precisely in balance one on the other, turning in curves and creating what can be walls and columns at the same time.  For a moment it looks like geometric tumors coming out from the ruined walls going to “swallow “  it all.
Or maybe, like in the film:  Being John Malkovich, it was just a visit in the head of Marjan Teeuwen, the artist who created this total fantastic experience.

With this work of Wang Gongxin & Lin Tianmiao I felt like a peeper. Not only because of the round shape of the work, like it is the round hole you have in peepshows. Mainly because they created in their works a feeling as if you are looking secretly into a mysterious ceremony, an event with its own rules and with it own members. And you, are not invited.  

In a series called Sweet Crazies of Jan Hoek, this one struck my eye. In this photo I could see that this man has kingly character. It is in his soul. It comes out with his posture and look. A real royal person doesn’t need to have a royal gown, a crown or even a throne. It looks like he needed only to be discovered in the right moment with the right light.

The Westerborktransit camp, north Holland, the temperature is -7°c. I visited for the first time in my life this holocaust camp. I realized, after working for years with contemporary art, that one thing has changed for sure. The question, can art deal with the past changed to how art deals with the past.

In a series of works Viviane Sassen redefines the term fashion photography. More than anything it is a series with an amazing composition of colors, light and forms. Not like many other fashion photographers who use the female body as  an object to hang clothes on, here the woman become the pivot of the art work – literally.

The main exhibition in The Tropenmuseum, the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam is: Looking at the “other”! Isn’t this what one calls a contradiction in terms!?