2011年4月13日
Klaas Burger- An Art Party at Y3
The first thing I felt upon entering the CAP Café last Friday evening was a reassuring sense of familiarity. Lately, I come here almost daily either for lunch with my colleagues or organization meetings. The café here at Studio Y3 has always been a welcoming place.
So as I watched Klaas Burger, a visiting artist from the
Netherlands, enter the room, I wondered what he was feeling. He has an easy
manner, a bright expression and on this evening, a faint blush. He chatted
briefly with guests and then settled into preparing his presentation. Klaas was
there that night to construct what, he told me earlier in the week, would be a history of his work.
With Shimoda Nobuhisa in his customary role as MC and interpreter, Klaas took us for a tour of his work over past few years. From projects completed at the art house that he founded in the Netherlands to Istanbul and Beijing, his work ranges across boundaries and themes.
Working through Installation Art, Klaas takes a kind of tactical approach to questions that are at once political and personal. His work has directness and a plainspoken quality that is lively and refreshing. His practice includes work that is architectural and critical as well as performance-based and humorous. The humor notwithstanding one can see this work as an engaging social critique and a sustained call for self- directed thought. In our conversations and in his presentation, Klaas repeatedly referenced the importance of thinking for oneself.
Klaas Burger is a very thoughtful man, and as I learned form an earlier conversation, inclined to think to the heart of things. As he concluded his talk, I was looking forward to the project he is developing in his studio on the fourth floor at CAP Studio Y3. I would like to remind our readers that Studio Y3 is an open studio program, so if you are curious, you can drop by and watch as the work develops. In addition, if you would like to talk with Klass or any of the artists at Studio Y3, you can call our offices at: 070 222 1003 (English is spoken here) and arrange a meeting. Or send us and email.
More Soon,
Paul Venet
Paul Venet
