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Sjoerd Buisman |
The Baukunst Galerie opens on Friday, the 22nd of September 2006 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. a large solo-exhibition of the works by the Dutch artist Sjoerd Buisman. Dr. Christiane Stahl, director of the Alfred-Ehrhardt-Stiftung in Cologne, will introduce in his artistic opus. “Manipulations“ is already the second exhibition of this artist in the gallery. In the last exhibition in 2002 titled “Nature – Sculpture” the main emphasis was placed on his sculptures of the past twenty years. This time above all his photographic works will be presented, but also selected special specimens of the flora.
Sjoerd Buisman was born in 1948 in Gornichen (NL). After his studies of visual arts at the Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten (1965-67) he received a scholarship of the Dutch Ministry of Culture (1972). Two years later he already taught at the very academy as a professor. In 1977 he succeeded with a travel scholarship for South America and teaching positions at the academies voor Kunst en Vormgeving in s’Hertogenbosch and Arnheim. In 2003 he was awarded with the A. Roland Holstpenäng prize. Buisman already realized his projects and exhibitions in several national and international places, among others at the 38th Biennale di Venezia, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Antwerp, the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede (NL), the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo (NL), the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lissabon and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. His works are represented in renowned public collections and museums as the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich or the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
In form and content of Buisman’s works – either sculptures or photographs – growth is always the dominating subject in a continuously changing way. It starts with observations of located floral characteristics and self-initiated manipulations, through systematic registrations and growth-analyses of normal and abnormal occurrences to the transcription and display of these phenomena in sculptures, photographs and collections of plants in plexi-glass-boxes.
The artist uses nature as medium and inspiration for his artistic process: Nature provides him with material, he can mould, cut and combine in a new way, manipulating its growth by constriction, inversion, light exposure, covering and wrapping. Buisman allows nature to participate in the configuration and be a part of the operating process. He explores its determinations and structures and manipulates them according to his ideas. This central theme of cultivation of plants refers to his ancestry from the Netherlands, where agriculture is characterised by tulip fields and greenhouses.
Since several centuries – analogue to the forwarding alteration of our environment – art and culture generated ideas and images, which determine our comprehension and handling of nature. In the works of Sjoerd Buisman the interaction of art and nature gains a new quality: Nature itself becomes a three-dimensional piece of art. In case of the dry presentation of found and self-manipulated parts of plants in showcases and frames, first of all it is the context, which causes the transformation of a plant to a piece of art: the isolation from its natural environment and the placement in the White Cube of the exhibition space forces the spectator to change his perspective: knots in widow-branches, twisted trunks and gnarls as well as various coloured leafs are perceived as an artistic opulence of shapes and colours. The photographs conserve a certain state of growth - similar to an inventory – or draw the attention of the spectator to a phenomenon he would barely notice in passing by in nature.
This dry presentation is opposed by the absurd and violent manner, Buisman intervenes in the growth process of the plants. He loops leather belts around vegetables and scratches writings in their skin. These manipulations cause constrictions, deformations and cicatrisations, but do not bar the plants from continuously increasing their size by growing. The violent subjugation of nature is subverted by the unveiling of its unfaltering power, which defies all cultural encroachments. Thus Buisman aware juxtaposes his self-initiated manipulations with images of phenomena he found in natural environment, for example a photography of a tree adnated with barbwire. This way Sjoerd Buisman’s photographic and sculptural registrations of found floral singularities on the one hand and growth experiments on the other hand increase our awareness of nature and its constitutive structures.
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