Ruud van Empel

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Ruud Van Empel (6th Photo Art Festival), 2015

Ruud van Empel , actually Rudolph Franciscus Maria van Empel (born November 21, 1958 in Breda ) is a Dutch photo artist .

biography

Ruud van Empel was born in Breda in 1958. From 1976 to 1981 he studied graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sint Joost Breda. After working briefly as a designer, he switched to video and photography. He designs theater sets and film posters and has worked on artistic design for various TV and film productions and created video tapes . In the late 1980s he moved to Amsterdam, where he continued to develop as an artist. His first series of photos were The Office (1995–2001), Study for Women (1999–2002) and Study in Green (2003). He had his first solo exhibition in 1999 at the Groninger Museum. The series World - Moon - Venus , which was exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester New York in 2006 Picturing Eden , gave him his international breakthrough.

He lives and works in Amsterdam.

plant

Until mid-1995, the work of the artist Ruud van Empel consisted primarily of montages of analog photographs. The traditional collage : cutting, pasting and retouching in the darkroom, he later exchanges for image processing on the computer. He inherently approaches ideas. The first series to emerge from this process of acting and reacting is The Office (1995). In a technical sense, The Office appears handmade and the content of the images is not yet as perfectly put together as it will be in the later works. Van Empel already proves how his working method differs from disciplines such as staged photography . The Office appears surreal and, in terms of style and design, refers to photo montages from the 1920s. On the basis of these art historical references, Van Empel creates a new genre in photography without a suitable name for it. He himself describes his way of working as: "Constructing a photographic image". Although he works with pure photomontage - he does not use so-called morphing techniques - the content-related result, unlike in surrealist works, relates to what actually exists. The artificiality of the process is visible, but the final image represents a convincing, independent reality. The image construction does not appear grotesque or absurd and could appear that way in reality. Each of the photographic works stands on its own and is neither painterly conspicuous nor overloaded with pictographic associations. Ruud van Empel's works exist because of the camera with which he determines his building material. He does not use photography as a substitute for painting, but makes the medium his own by using photographic means to digitally assemble his representations from photographic material.

After The Office for the period 2000-2002, the series follows Study for Women , a series of portraits of the art movement of the magical realism inspired. This announces the imagery with which Van Empel is recognized worldwide. The series Study in Green (2003–2004), Untitled (2004) and the closely related series World, Moon and Venus (from 2005) brought Van Empel worldwide recognition and an international breakthrough. Curator Deborah Klochko invites him to take part in the Picturing Eden exhibition at George Eastman House . In the publication Ruud van Empel Photoworks 1995-2010, she describes his work as follows: “Van Empel's virtuosity lies in his ability, the foundations of painting (historical references, the power of fleeting impressions, use of color) and cinema (structures of multiple imagery and power of narration) are inherent in photography to combine and execute on a large scale. In order to understand his work one has to ask himself: is it science or art? Is it Reality or Fiction? Is it innocence or decadence? ”The World series , which deals with the subject of innocence and is inspired by photographs taken by his father, is particularly impressive. Van Empel places neatly dressed colored boys and girls in a paradisiacal setting of untouched, non-existent nature. To this day, this series in particular bundles the worldwide interest and appreciation of Van Empel's work. The breakthrough in America also attracted the attention of the museums in the Netherlands that now have his works in their collections. This was followed by solo exhibitions at the Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen, the Groninger Museum and the NoordBrabants Museum in Den Bosch.

Since the international recognition of Ruud van Empels as an artist personality with a unique and independent visual language, he has continuously expanded his oeuvre. a. with the series Theater (2010–2013) and with Souvenir , in which he reproduces concise memories of his childhood in Breda as still lifes. This series was acquired by the NoordBrabants Museum. Typical of Van Empel's work is the composition of perfect and idealized representations, formulated down to the smallest detail, which, even if not always obvious, always have a dark side to them. Ruud Schenk, curator of the Groninger Museum, wrote about this aspect in relation to the series Study for Women (2000–2002): “As a viewer, one has the feeling that something is wrong with the portrayal of women, they do not seem entirely lifelike, but rather more like a mix of real women and mannequins. This creates a certain discomfort, a restlessness that was described as "the uncanny" in the early 20th century ".

Although an era seems to be captured in the photo images, it is difficult to assign an exact date to them. The timeless content of Ruud van Empel's photographs takes on a different meaning in his most recent works, for example in Still Life (2014), in which he explores topics such as transience and vanity symbolism. In addition, there are now portraits of older people, such as the one in the series Sunday (2012) or the series Nude (2014) in which he questions the poses of models and the aesthetics of nudity. With Solo Works (2011) Van Empel only ever works on a single theme in a stand-alone single work. Moral, ethical and aesthetic basic questions of society and art are presented to us in photographic imagery. The importance of his work is manifested in countless publications and international exhibitions, not only those specializing in photography, but equally renowned institutions for contemporary art.

literature

  • Sunday Chapter (2012), Flatland Gallery
  • Ruud van Empel, Photoworks 1995–2010 (2011), Groninger Museum / MOPA
  • Photoworks 2006–2008 (2009)
  • Photo Sketch (2007)
  • Photo Archive (2007)
  • World Moon Venus (2006), Museum Het Valkhof
  • Study in Green (2003), TZR Gallery
  • Ruud van Empel, Photo Album # 1 (2001), BIS Publishers
  • The Office (1998), Torch Gallery
  • Photographics (1996)

Documentaries

On September 7, 2011, the documentary ( De onschuld voorbij ) by Erik van Empel (Westerdok Film) about the work of Ruud van Empel was broadcast by the Dutch television station NTR . The American documentary filmmaker, Harvey Wang interviewed Ruud van Empel in 2010 for his production ( From darkroom to daylight ). Other worldwide recognized photographers in this film are u. a. Sally Mann , David Goldblatt and Gregory Crewdson .

Awards

  • Sint Joost Prize 1981
  • Charlotte Köhler Prize 1993
  • HN Werkman Prize 2001
  • City of Breda Culture Oeuvre Prize 2013

Exhibitions

  • Ruud van Empel Photo Works, Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch The Netherlands February 15 to June 8, 2014
  • Ruud van Empel FoMU Photo Museum, Antwerp Province, Belgium June 28 to October 2013
  • Ruud van Empel Pictures don't Lie, Fotografiska , Stockholm, March 9 to June 8, 2013 [2] [3]
  • Ruud van Empel Strange beauty, MoPA Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, USA October 12, 2012 to February 1, 2013
  • Ruud van Empel Fotowerken 1995–2010, Groninger Museum , September 10, 2011 to November 27, 2011
  • Ruud van Empel World and other series, Museum Het Valkhof, March 24 to June 4, 2007
  • Ruud van Empel Waterpas of optically right? Groninger Museum , January 23 to March 30, 1999

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vita, Galerie Wagner + Partner, Berlin ( Memento from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Empel, Ruud van
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Empel, Rudolph Franciscus Maria van (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch photo artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Breda