‘How many examples do you know of a long-term collaboration between an artist and a fashion stylist? That hardly happens. Still, it worked very well for us.’ The artist and fashion stylist in question are beaming. Their first joint exhibition opens on Saturday at Galerie Bart in Amsterdam: boost† The day before the opening, the gallery is filled with the ‘foil paintings’ that are characteristic of the Rotterdam visual artist Jochem Rotteveel: panels covered with shiny, pleated pieces of adhesive foil in striking color combinations.
He didn’t make them alone this time, but together with fashion stylist Thomas Vermeer. Before joining forces for this exhibition, they both worked in very different worlds; Rotteveel spent his days mostly alone in his studio, Vermeer worked as a stylist on photo shoots for magazines such as Elle and Harper’s Bazaar† They met at a previous Rotteveel exhibition, got to talking and decided to continue the conversation later in Rotteveel’s studio. Vermeer: ’I thought: I’ll just drop by for an hour. After four hours we still hadn’t finished talking. We mainly talked about our shared fascination for color.’
This is how their three-month collaboration began, an investigation into the effect of color. They had been working on that theme for years, each in their own way. Rotteveel: ‘I work according to the hard edge painting, painting abstract areas of color, not with paint but with adhesive foil. When you paint areas of color, and especially when you work with foils – you can’t mix or blend colors. The relationship between the color areas is therefore very important, and I started to delve more and more into that.’
Vague, slightly dirty colors
How do different colors react to each other and how do you create feelings with color? Vermeer is also involved in this as a fashion stylist, he says, mainly because as a stylist he likes to combine plain clothes, an approach that color blocking is called. He uses a sketch composition as an example. The A4 contains small pieces of light red, deep orange and burgundy foil. ‘These colors are warm in their own right, because the shades are close together, it gets something sultry.’
The duo has made countless such sketches. There was no detailed plan for the collaboration, they just started talking and sketching in Rotteveel’s studio in Rotterdam. ‘I found Thomas’ way of working very interesting’, says Rotteveel. ‘He immediately started cutting samples from the foils I had in the studio, and made combinations with them. I myself have a more theoretical approach, for example I use complementary colours. Thomas’s approach is very intuitive.’ Vermeer: ’That’s how I work at a photo shoot. I always start by taking clothes off the racks and putting them together, that’s how I map out the palette.’
As a result of this research, their use of color has gradually changed, says Rotteveel. ‘We both turned out to have a penchant for faint, a little dirty colors that are hard to define. They add a lot of depth to a fresh, clear composition.’ Beige, for example, can appear almost white on its own. If you combine it with cool colors, such as blue or mint green, it gets an orange shimmer. ‘We discovered that the most successful compositions combine brighter and more murky colours.’
Color Waterfall
There is no hidden message behind the color combinations, says Vermeer. During their research they did, however, extensively consider the psychological dimension of colors and the feelings they evoke. Combining fresh and cloudy colors can be seen as a reference to the light and dark sides of a person’s personality. ‘Color works very directly on emotions, I often notice during shoots that people become enthusiastic and energetic. And yet many people are afraid of color in their clothing or interior.’
What the duo especially learned from the collaboration is the added value of interdisciplinary collaboration. Vermeer: ’We were each working on our own island to solve the same problem. Namely: how do you evoke feelings by combining colors? Behind the scenes there is much more overlap between art and fashion than you might think at first glance.’
You can see this overlap in the artworks in Galerie Bart. The big eye-catcher is a 4.5 meters high and 3.5 meters wide ‘color waterfall’ made of pieces of foil and pieces of fabric, which undulating from the ceiling. At the top the colors are light: beige, yellow, mint green and pink. At the bottom, dark blue, purple and deep orange dominate, colors that pull the whole thing down. The first sketch Rotteveel made for this artwork was very different, he shows: a tight composition with pixelated areas of color.
In the sketch that Vermeer made in response, the lines are much smoother and the colors are closer together. The final artwork is a combination of those two sketches, with smooth lines and contrasting areas of color. ‘We would never have made this work of art on our own,’ says Rotteveel. “It really is a synergy.”
boost by Jochem Rotteveel and Thomas Vermeer can be seen until 26/3 at Galerie Bart in Amsterdam.
Colorism
During their research, Rotteveel and Vermeer found inspiration in outspoken colorists in art and design history, such as painters Henri Matisse and David Hockney, photographer Nick Knight and industrial designer Hella Jongerius. In colorism, color is the most important characteristic of a painting. The tendency is influenced by French impressionism and became more prominent in the early 20th century among the Fauvist, such as Matisse. Since then there have been many different incarnations, including in the work of abstract expressionist color fieldpainters in the 1940s and 1950s.