Just Goofing Around


In this publication I brought together some visual experiments, and illustrated several mental notes I collected over time. The art-works are partially commenting on the visuality and language of pop-culture and reference different parts of it. A printed copy of the booklet can be ordered here.



Mark


This must be wonderful!
I don’t understand it at all.


‘This must be wonderful! I don’t understand it at all.’ consists of three works for my first solo-exhibition at WOW-Amsterdam in 2017. The works are a visual exploration of ‘Terror Management Theory’, an anthropological theory that describes the ways in which humans cope with the fear of death on an emotional, intellectual and societal level.
I used the verticality of the show-room to create a continuous narrative from the bottom to the top. The panels represent different stages in dealing with the fear of death. Each image-strip represents a keyword in the story-line that develops throughout the whole installation. I combined the results of extensive, keyword-based Google Image search-quests with images of my private archive and arranged them intuitively. The images from a vast array of cultural sources appear without an internal hierarchy in significance or origin. Each combination can strengthen, disturb or destroy the message of each original picture and create new meanings and interpretations all at once. Ultimately the works reveal fundamental similarities between people and eras with fundamentally different world views and encourage a more light-hearted attitude towards terror management, acknowledging the bizarre forms in which they are shaping our lives and culture.
The titles of the works derrived from fortune-cookie wisdoms.



Mark

#OnceUponManyTimes


I am fascinated by how various cultural influences mix and overlap through the internet. In the book #OnceUponManyTimes, I investigate a new way to tell a story through the children’s classic Little Red Riding Hood. The tale is reduced to a list of keywords like ‘sweet little girl’, ‘wolf’, ‘deceit’, or ‘triumph’. Each spread of the book is illustrated by the results of a Google image search for these words. The images reveal a rich collage of multiple cultural narratives that create a distinctive storyline based on associative interpretations rather than rational ones.



Mark


ReFrame Rijksmuseum


For the design competition Rijks Open by Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I designed a liporello-style folded book, that puts cut outs of paitnings from the museum-collection, next to iconic contemporary photographs. The project started with the idea to give new meaning and form to parts of the vast archive of the Rijksmuseum. It does not only literally reframe the historic paintings and drawings that intrigued me, but also puts them in a new historical context. The additional images are chosen, partly because of pure formal resemblance, partly for contextual similarities between the pairings and partly intuitively. It was important to me, that the added imagery would be iconic, recognizable and of contemporary cultural relevance, to counterweigh the importance and recognizability of famous, masterly paintings, nearly treating them as if they could be paintings in the Rijksmuseum themselves, representing our time and the things that move us.
The cut-outs of the paintings are revealed through actual cut-outs in the paper of the double-sidedly printed liporello. 



Mark


Mask Research


This research stems from my fascination for questions around identity. Specifically I focused on external layers of identity, their multiple forms and their meaning for individuals and the society.
The starting point was my own personal collection of inspiration imagery. I looked at overreaching themes within the images, sorted them and backed up the categories I made for my self with research from multiple fields. The research resulted in a book which is at the same time a visual encyclopedia as much as it serves as a personal source for inspiration in my design and art practice.



Mark
Mark