2017


The Broken Promised Land - Arie van Geest

"Creating a host of physical and spiritual griefs around ourselves will not do: the secret of our shabby fate is not revealed to us." 1

1) Comte de Lautréamont: "The Songs of Maldoror"


At all times art compensates
the fate we find ourselves in (...)
2

2) Arie van Geest: Letter to Age Klink, August7th 2010



The Garden of the Essential Emptiness

Everything is interconnected, is a favourite motto of Arie van Geest.

This certainly applies to his work, a 46-year-long quest. When comparing his work from the seventies with his recent paintings, we notice an immense development in his art of painting, ranging from realistic fine-painting to an almost impressionist, but equally subtle method.

Familiar image elements return, mostly from the wondrous world of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. We recognize the association method in which the story of the painting is told by combining apparently unrelated image elements in a way that defies interpretation. Some of these elements belong to Van Geest’s stock image canon. Time and again they come on in different ways, in different combinations.

However, take care, this is not repetition, not an easy ‘variation’ on a theme. This is all about deeper penetration, about getting closer and closer to the world behind the mirror. Therefore this is not about a reflected image. By playing a caleidoscopic game with world-wide image quotations he traces actual reality. Everything resembles what it is, is another Van Geest motto.

(Introduction: Wouter Welling)
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eBook 'The Broken Promised Land' The Broken Promised Land
(24 out of 96 pages shown)
  • Text: Wouter Welling
  • English translation: Ron Stans
  • Photography: Rick Messemaker, Ido Menco, Vincent Mentzel, Han van der Leur, Arie van Geest, Berneja van den Berg
  • Graphic design: Studio Gijs Dragt, Zwolle
  • Printing: Rekafa Drukkers, Venlo
  • Publisher: Van Spijk / Rekafa Publishers, Alias Editions, Livingstone Editions

  • Format: 24½ x 17½ cm, 96 p. (55 reproductions)
  • Edition size: 750, 45 of which as deluxe edition
    - 15 (book & watercolor) [sold out]
    - 30 (book & drawing) [price: € 159,- incl. 6% VAT]
  • Regular edition price: € 17,50

  • Front cover:
    Rendez-vous, 2015 [Detail]
  • Back cover:
    Songbird (Moana), 2013 [Detail]

  • Many thanks to: Jeroen Dijkstra, Pascal van Spijk, Berneja van den Berg, Etienne Dupont, Mark Tobeas, Hans Sonnenberg, Sjaak Spoorendonk, Hans Walgenbach

  • ISBN 978 90 6216 920 7
  • NUR 640, 644

  • © Arie van Geest 2016 / www.arievangeest.com
© Arie van Geest