Teaser

EX-MÊKH is preparing for the Hybrid Art Fair and experimenting with their materials. Here some try-outs by Kees Koomen who is looking for a interesting way to present his series of New Encounters The work is intended as an homage to the sketches Goya made in the streets of Madrid and elsewhere. Those drawings and etchings were my favourite artworks in art-school:

Francisco Goya: Este tiene muchos patientes y algunos racionales
I imagine them talking French inside
I imagine them talking French inside
Inti baladi…
Inti baladi…

Presentation and auction large drawing RUW #6

Friday September 29 was the day RUW #6 was presented to the public. It happened during Hoogtij, the two-monthly open platforms evening in Den Haag. For the occasion HOK gallery was available and the editor decided that a large drawing was to be made by all participants in this edition of RUW. This drawing was going to be auctioned on sunday.

The presentation was a succes, many visitors came by to see the new RUW Magazine and not many magazines were left in the end. You can find an account of the opening here!

Selfie Monika Dahlberg during opening
My contribution to RUW #6: La hora santa (coloourpencil, oilstick, ashes)

Then sunday the auction of the large drawing took place. It did not draw a lot of attention but those who came were a motivated public. After some useless attempts of the auctioneer Geert Schriever to sell the drawing as a whole details of the drawing were offered for which two ladies showed the formats with wooden angles. This worked better and the afternoon ended with a positive amount of money on the account and everybody enjoying a glass of wine.

left part of the drawing
right part of the drawing
The text in charcoal on paint is my personal contribution
The auctioneer and his assistants

RUW

Equinox

Equinox was a succes with more then twenty performers on the Hof in Dordrecht. There were moments that the atmosphere was beautiful in slow movements with colour and sound.
My own performance existed of soundbytes that I spread out over the square by speaking them out to people, by writing them on little scraps of paper and hiding them on the square and by listening for sounds of the past on different places of the historic square. The soundbytes were pieces of conversation or cries that I noted during my project Walks to the Malieveld. You can find an account of the afternoon here! And a video by Steef van Lent can be found here!

I did also make two sketches of performers which you can see here:

A man pouring water (Frans van Lent)
A woman manipulating textiles (Marita Bulman)
Briefje met soundbyte

222lodge

The Diaries project page

Kees Koomen: Mascara – 1984 (From the Mexican diary)

In spring I started the project page on this website on which I show the source of a lot of my work. It shows the sketches I make next to my texts in my diaries. Lots of them are the inspiration for new paintings, installations or performances. I recently published sketches from my trip to the US and Mexico in 1984 which proved a change of focus from the USA and western culture to the more European background I grew up in. I realised that I admired the Spanish colonial heritage in Mexico and California and that I never traveled to Spain. My interest in Spanish culture and Mediterranean culture in general began to grow. Ezra Pound’s translation of French troubadour poetry and Spanish Renaissance poetry was also an inspiration.

Driftwood

Back from a short stay elsewhere I found DeFKa-Research Magazine #6 in my mailbox. In this magazine essays and art on the theme Driftwood are published. I participated with a piece under the name Drijfhout (text in Dutch) with outtakes from my diaries from since I finished art school. The Illustrations are artworks that were based on these outtakes. I first wrote a thorough theoretical piece, but I changed my mind about that and I send in this text thinking it is better to show and not tell. Magazines can be ordered on the site of DeFKa Research.

An older text that I wrote for DeFKa Research, The Lying Poet, can now be read on my own site.

Cover of the magazine
The first pages