About Me

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Van Rijn positions his work within, beyond, aside and in front of everyday reality. Its content is fuelled by the ever recurring discussion on the end of art, which is taken as a metaphor for today's cultural and moral state of affairs. Currently his focus is on researching the cultural dimensions of Neo-Paganism, specifically Wicca or Modern Witchcraft. Stemming from the spiritual attitudes within early modernism, Wicca's sampling of existing 'traditions' into a new religious phenomenon has many tangents with today's artist practice. Through an output of text, images and performance, it puts forward challenging approaches to fundamental socio-cultural concepts such as time and history, nature and ecology, gender relations, spirituality and religion. Employing a wide range of media -from drawing to artists' publications and from installation to performance- Van Rijn's research explores Neo-Paganism as an invented revivalist tradition based on rejected knowledge.

Sunday, September 24, 2006



Announcement, 58 x 42 cm., 2005




Innocence, 150 x 200 cm., 2005




Beauty, 150 x 110 cm., 2005




Island of the dead painter
, 145 x 110 cm., 2005




Old story, 150 x 110 cm., 2005




Re-enchant the disenchanted, 150 x 110 cm., 2005




Fate, 150 x 110 cm., 2005





Until...
, 190 x 150 cm., 2006


The Venture Series:
The images of this series resemble blown up illustrations from a book which narrative has been lost. Their sepia washes conjure up an exaggerated nostalgia. Each work represents an island, undermined by the forces of nature. The islands are inhabited by exiles from better times: all to human fairies, animated corpes and decomposing detritus of all sorts. They are groteque icons of lust for life and inevitable decay, overpowered by natural impulses.
Each island is a stop on the ocean of the imagination. Together they make up an archipelago of frayed stage sets and their marooned inhabitants play out scenes of lost innocence, melancholy, discomfort and enchantment...