Jantien Jongsma & Stan Klamer

'Back to the Future'

Jantien Jongsma (1965) recently completed the project Back to the Future about her residential area Slotervaart, one of Amsterdam's garden cities that was built in the 1950's according to the principle of light, air and space. In the works on paper for the project,
she first focused on the greenery and birds of the parks and then on the architecture.
The people in the neighborhood were next: cyclists, parcel deliverers, people shopping,
who perform repetitive actions as in a kind of choreography.

Jongsma conceives the whole as a ballet and gives the inhabitants costumes that are folkloric and modernistic, the buildings becoming set pieces for a kind of continuous performance. The ideal of ​​progress of modernist architecture thus takes on a warm human quality, changing the city into a playful, nurturing environment.

The river IJ

The immediate environment also plays an important role for Stan Klamer (1951). His studio on KNSM Island Amsterdam overlooks the river IJ where he sees boats and vessels passing by everyday. Ships have an important place in his drawings, which he sees as a kind of metaphorical topographical maps in which he can organize his thoughts.

His most recent work often features circles, large and small, which together form a constellation in which boats, objects, people and animals are incorporated. The set of circles can also be interpreted as a celestial map or cosmology in which the spiritual and otherworldly are given a place. Stan Klamer draws with great precision and concentration in a time-consuming process that is immediately palpable and draws you into the image.
The viewer is thus invited to follow and supplement the artists' associations and thoughts.