Some artists change the way you look at something forever. In the documentary Leaning into the Wind (2017) I saw how the English landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy (now 66) collected the yellowest autumn leaves from a tree and carefully covered a number of stones with them. As if he applied a layer of gold leaf on it. Nature with a longer shelf life – stone – was adorned with more rapidly decaying nature. The effect of the mysterious, fleeting interventions was dazzling. Because Goldsworthy made this natural composition, bright yellow autumn leaves have become forever more beautiful and magical for me.
In the New Institute is now the nice little photo exhibition This Too Shall Pass can be seen by Rein Kooyman (30), who painted erratic boulders in the Alps in striking colours. There is one boulder in almost every photo; some lie in a rocky landscape, others once stranded somewhere in the middle of a river. Each boulder was given its own color: red, white, yellow, pink, blue, orange, purple, black and green.
Kooyman has used environmentally friendly paint. The red is paprika powder, which he bought in bulk on the market. The bright blue stone, which is not inferior in color and intensity to Yves Klein’s ultramarine, is largely colored with clay. The paint will disappear by itself after a few rain showers. Where necessary, Kooyman visited with brooms and cleaning rags for aftercare, so that no trace was left behind.
This is how the exhibition goes This Too Shall Pass emphatically about transience and transience. The title (‘This too shall pass’) is an ancient wisdom found in various cultures and languages, such as in the Persian myth in which a king asks his retinue for a wisdom of life that will be true at all times. Or in the story of King Solomon, who wanted a ring with an inscription that could make the unhappy person happy and the happy person sad.
Kooyman’s project arose from the corona crisis. ‘My assignments as a commercial photographer fell away in one fell swoop. Before corona I was an all-rounder: hypersocial and very passionate about my work. At such a moment when everything suddenly stops, you find out that things oppress you. All these years I was running, but for what?’
He left for the Alps for a while, where his brother works in a hotel. The idea of painting stones was a form of agitation. ‘When painting, I could let everything go. Everything ebbed away. I entered a kind of trance, it was very calming.’
At a time when it was unclear which things made sense, Kooyman filled his time with an emphatically ‘pointless’ project that underlined the transience of everything. “That was very comforting, and an enormous sense of freedom.”
When I ask Kooyman if he knows Goldsworthy, he jumps. “Yes, Goldsworthy played it all!” In other words, Goldsworthy is unbeatable. ‘His book Ephemeral Works I open it every day for inspiration.’
His working method also appeals to him: Goldsworthy regularly works without too many preconceived plans, and landscape art, performance and photography also flow together with him.
I tend to think that Kooyman’s project is not essentially about the photos, but about the painting of the stones, the meditative action in the here and now, like a one-man performance that someone performs for himself.
Kooyman himself sees it slightly differently: ‘For me, the beauty lies precisely in the disappearance of the work.’
Rein Kooyman (30)
Title This Too Shall Pass
Where The New Institute, Rotterdam
What Photo series of boulders and rocks painted with natural pigment paints, gum arabic and water from the Vénéon River.
When until 7/12.
Remarkable It took six to ten hours to paint each stone.