Dinie Wikkerink & Sophia de Vries - Solitude and light

Sophia de Vries: Landscapes drawn in steel

My images create space. A thin line is a horizon, somewhere there is a house with a tree in front of it. There is also a small church, on a mound surrounded by old trees. These are pieces of landscape that we all recognise from earlier or later times. This small world is of monumental proportions. Poetic visual stories summarise the essence of the landscape and inspire us to dream. Work that, through its content and choice of materials, invites reflection on our relationship with space and time. 
Her traditional approach to working with steel adds an extra layer of complexity to her work. You can see from the sculptures that it took a lot of effort, that they were shaped with sweat and sometimes brute force and finished with love, tenderness and attention. This often results in sober and simple sculptures that, despite their sturdy material and powerful method of creation, are fragile and tender. Someone once said about her work: "It's that house, that tree... you've seen it somewhere before, but you can't quite remember where." It's about an atmosphere, a certain situation, a moment in time. There is loneliness in a positive sense. They are the contours of a memory.

Dinie Wikkerink: Light and space

The work of this photographer has a similar atmosphere. She pays attention to the everyday things around her. Using the light of the present, she creates images that are timeless and characterised by concepts such as beauty and comfort. She finds her way home in her imagination, where she is most deeply moved, mainly in motifs close to home. In the environment where she was born and where she learned to know the essence of her being. Light is her most important tool, her camera the silent witness to all the beauty that passes by. The following words, spoken by Ad Mertens in an opening speech at Kunstkring Het Gelders Eiland, describe it beautifully: "Dinie Wikkerink does not arrange, she reports what she sees. It is a search for the minimal that still has expressive power, light that speaks by virtue of darkness and expresses concepts such as silence, simplicity and intimacy in an almost abstract way. The whole image takes on an exciting structure through strong shadow effects. In fact, Dinie Wikkerink follows in a long tradition of painting in which light plays a central role. Light is elusive and even difficult to name, but at the same time very present. Her work speaks volumes, keeping us sensitive to simplicity and small but intense happiness.”

In the series ‘Beelden op de vlucht’ (Images on the Run), a new image is created from the basic material. As in Sophia’s work, these images refer to a memory.