turning pages
As a result of his contribution to the exhibition 'Birds and Flowers' in 1992 at Artis in Den Bosch, Bart Drost was invited to put together a solo presentation of new work to be made. He turned it into a total spectacle with modern paintings, antique excavations and statues of contemporary heroes. Techniques and colors refer to the 1991 exhibition.
A work grant stimulated Drost to do research in 'painting on canvas'. He had about 200 canvases stretched in various sizes. So what to do now? Educated at the Monumental Textiles department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, he lacks technical painting skills. That is why he had to develope his own technique: he started by applying a drawing in Indian ink. Rough, wet. He then 'colours in with acrylic lacquer paint', making use of the wet ink. Color shades arise. The work is fast, fast. He soon wanted to work on a larger scale and for this purpose he combined panels of various sizes. Initially, his color palette is limited to orange and we can - remember the grisailles - speak of orangeailles.
Drost is fascinated by vases from ancient Greece. The color shade of the pottery, the subtly applied paintings. And especially the erotically charged images appeal to his imagination. In other words: the fact that the nude does not always have to have a directly erotic charge. In previous exhibitions Drost made use of the sawing technique: in 'Nieuwe kleren voor de Keizer' in 1987, he makes images from his paintings into wooden spatial objects. For 'Make your own love affairs' Drost mixed his sawing talent with his predilection for the erotic image: he sawed vases, plates and dishes and applied wooden images of boys in sexual activity. An orange acrylic paint provides the pottery color tone.
Drost wanted to add a few statues to this exhibition of paintings and excavations. In three pastel drawings (50x65 cm) he found the ideal image: 'Koen the knight', 'Boy on a dog', and 'Without Hubertus'. He executed them in wood, constructed from plywood lines. More than life size.
