8 sep 2018 toegevoegd
On a rainy afternoon I meet with visual artist and language virtuoso Gerrit Cnossen in Sneek for the publication of 'Out of your roof through the cosmic ellipse around Venus', a powerful work with erotic drawings and poems. Together we dive in his collection full of fantastic combinations of text and images. It is a joy to read.
Bundle
Artist Cnossen works with a 'marriage' of drawings and poems, a gesture between image and language. In his startling collection, 36 pastel drawings or fragments illustrate more than 50 poems. Every poem is written as a metaphor, imagery with a comparison. In an unbelievable way, Gerrit knows how to describe and portray eroticism without falling into plain language. Or as he himself says: "It is an orgy of metaphors" and " Oh Superlative what I love you .. ".
...
Like a tasty one
loose cough sneeze
comes the Great Totem
who wants to go fast
entrench
in her fleet
to be so whole-hearted
get a grip
on her navy.
(From Droogh geweerth, page 16)
Gerrit explains on the basis of the title of the bundle what a woman means to him. Venus is for him the woman, and represents her beauty, which makes him go crazy. All that in a cosmic ellipse, in which the attraction of the woman is. It is not a circle but an ellipse, because a circle is stable and in an ellipse just acceleration / movement is 'that drama of attraction' .
Cnossen shows his admiration for the woman. Just like his grandfather Gerrit did. His poetry collection starts with a poem by P.J. Troelstra that his grandfather had included in one of his diaries at the beginning of 1900. His grandfather could also go from his roof to a woman.
Gerrit says about this: "I place a woman on a pedestal and decorate it to come closer to her . In her i search and find purity and beauty. "He is more than just sex, he only wants contact with her both mentally and physically.
......
You can always abuse me during the day
Defeated as the umpteenth
cigarette for hands.
Fluorescent and white adhesive tar
descend to your toes
'Your cigarette suit'
always fills up
with such a sucking mouth
in his head
To be able
to pump wet yawns up
as an oral cannula
(From Love Channel, page 34)
For the draftsman / poet, writing metaphors is quite normal. He does not do this to disguise the eroticism as I suggest, 'No, he says, I am not bothered by fear in my work, there are no ultimate blockages, I start a work without a preconceived plan. I will never start with the question beforehand: "What are we going to draw." He sees this as the same kind of threshold as asking yourself: "What are you going to be." He does not paint, but draws with pastel, because he does not lose inspiration in time for preparation of the paint. He draws directly and spontaneously.
Oeuvre
The Frisian artist has been drawing with comics since he was 12 years old. He has created an enormous body of work in the course of time. These can be found and arranged on his website . He has made hundreds of pastel drawings that he divides into different categories.
He has made 'organic abstract' works and 'reversible'. The reversible drawings are chaotic and 'informal' and usually depict human figures.
On his side standing ;
- Where the ambitious and mentally ill, and physically otherwise wounded behind the ears, the stripped Farmer mirrors himself in the shit, who also wants to take him away from confession.-
As a landscape horizontal
- Where the ambitious Farmer, who is seduced by the free-spirited economy, is not yet aware of, his so Profitable Raised ... has mixed feelings that come to light in the not entirely unambiguous stool.-
While the organic have more finished round forms, the group ' Colorful abstractions ' tends more towards cubism.
-Along with Lip-smelling Whispering Muses, The Taurus with his Horn-Pointed Look knows how to push the Sweaty Origin into himself in such a way that the resulting swirling current will take him and everything else fertile to a place where the jumping water will flow into A Sea of germinating stillness.-
Then there is the category 'Daydream photos' contains photos with poems. While the 'Night dream photos' are digitally processed photos. For the Socialist Party site he made cartoons from 2005 to 2006.
When asked what he is currently doing, he answers mysteriously with 'raising awareness'. His father died a few months ago and Gerrit is busywith going through hundreds of photos that his father has left behind.
That ties in nicely with the work he was asked to make for the exhibition in Leeuwarden about the poet Jan Slauerhoff. This poet had a difficult relationship with his father. Cnossen tells about his own father that this was the Benjamin of the family.
Only when he got a uniform he did feel someone between his dominant brothers .
He says: "My father understood me very well, but avoided me. Feeling was difficult, that was not talked about.
My father was afraid of real contact. He felt 'well in his skin' in uniform, that was only imaging . "
Exhibition Leeuwarden
Cnossen has been asked to provide work for the exhibition from 3 August to 6 October 2018 in Dorpskerk Huizum in Leeuwarden, for which other Frisian artists have also been invited.
They are inspired by the longest poem 'In Memoriam Patris' by poet Jan Slauerhoff.
https://www.dlmplus.nl/2018/01/07/cnossens-kunstminnende-erotiek/
Rob Vellekoop, January 7, 2018