The Instituto Buena Bista – in collaboration with the fonds voor beeldende kunst (fund for the visual arts) in amsterdam- has for the past 3 months had the dutch visual artist Maartje Folkeringa as a guest in her residency program. Alongside her own work she also developed a workshop with the IBB students. We invite everyone to a lecture by the artist about her work and a presentation of the students’ work on tuesday the 30th of march 2010 starting at 19:30 at the ruyterkade 58.

Folkeringa makes figurative sculptures that represent complex characters. They are as much laborious and detailed as unpolished, raw and untamed. Her work illustrates the fragility and power of interpersonal communication. The inspiration for her characters come from her environment and the people that she meets or observes from a distance, but also from movies, books and the news. Maartje is especially fascinated and touched by conflicts where “the unspoken” causes discomfort. For her residency on Curacao, where she worked the past three months on her more than life sized new sculpture ‘lady I and iguana watchdog’, she let herself be inspired by the not integrating Dutch who in their home country sincerely feel that integration is a necessity. Visually she was grabbed by the bling-bling that you can find on Curacao in the forms of nails, bracelets, necklaces and clothing. The splendid ornamental barriers that are meant to provide protection from burglars also got her attention, just like the colored houses often with dilapidated façades. Especially when a big sparkling car is showing off next to her. Folkeringa lets visual and intrinsic assumptions go during her work process and a character and concept appear that she couldn’t have thought up beforehand. Material, shape, content and action are equally important to her as an artist. The physical quest stays visible because Maartje experiments directly on her eventual sculpture.
The characters appear, without the use of a skeletal frame, from the legs to the head. She molds polyurethane foam in trash bag liners. Onto the formed shape she then glues more plastic and so forth. She saws, cuts, glues, fills, snips, models clay and paints. She adds materials as plasticine, tape and glitter and removes others and so layers form in her work. One can discover a lot of often picturesque details in the work.

The sculpture ‘lady I and iguanadog’ shall be on display from the first of April during the design festival at Kooyman girts and gardens.

Alongside her own project Folkeringa conducted a seminar with the IBB students. The students imagined and described an imaginary persona. After this Maartje questioned them extensively to get to the core of their character and characteristics. Upon choosing a medium, they set of to work. Wonderful and widely varied works of art were made that are very much worth a visit to the ‘personification’ exhibition on Tuesday the 30th. The exhibition shall be opened by a talk by Maartje Folkeringa.

More information about the artist: maartjefolkeringa.nl

Date and time: IBB, de ruyterkade 58 (punda). Tuesday 30th of March 2010. Doors open at: 19:00 and entrance is free.