‘What you can do when standing in front of my work is the same thing I do while making it: breathe. Breathe the work in as you breathe the world in – and breathe yourself out again.’
Love letters
‘I take a sheet of paper and a pencil and draw a simple shape with one line’, says Van Dodewaard. ‘It is that line, the evidence of my moving hand, that says “I am here, now”.’ From that here and now, the artist invariably enters into a relationship with another person that transcends time and distance. Van Dodewaard describes her drawings as love letters. A selection from over 200 drawings she made in 2024 is on display here. Almost every day she ‘wrote’ these love letters, composed of illegible characters in coloured pencil and black ink. She addressed them to her own loved ones, but also to the observer of her work and to the world.
Encounter
Van Dodewaard created the sculptures from material she found behind the scenes at the Kröller-Müller Museum. The works embody an important motif in her work: assigning poetic value to what is already there. In this case, Van Dodewaard does so by bringing together existing objects and used items, such as stones from the museum building and old pedestals, held together by lashing straps. The sculptures, which balance precariously, mirror the dynamics in the drawings. Thus a playful dance between drawing and sculpture, artist and museum develops in the space.
Sources of inspiration
For this project, Van Dodewaard drew inspiration from Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and the Japanese Toko Shinoda (1913–2021), among others. She read Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo and studied the landscape paintings and drawings he made in Provence while living in Arles in 1888–1889. The repetitive strokes and curls with which Van Gogh depicted fields, trees and skies are echoed in that one line that Van Dodewaard kept on drawing. And like Van Gogh, she also studied Japanese art, particularly Shinoda’s abstract ink paintings. Via these art-historical references, which link the Netherlands, France and Japan, Van Dodewaard’s entirely unique visual language has emerged.
About Fleur van Dodewaard
The oeuvre of Fleur van Dodewaard (Haarlem, 1983) comprises photography, ceramics, painting, drawing and sculpture. Using basic materials such as wood, paper, paint and clay, the artist explores the boundaries between these genres and creates a visual language that is constantly changing, ‘like life itself’, according to Van Dodewaard.
For this project, Van Dodewaard works as artist-in-residence at the VAGUE exhibition spaces and studios in Arles and Kobe of the Teruhiro Yanagihara Studio, and is financially supported by the Mondriaan Fund.