Paul Hendrikse (1977) studied at the sculpture-department of the art school in ‘s-
Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands and Architecture in Antwerp, Belgium. He has been
a researcher at the Fine Art department of the Jan van Eyck academy, a post-
academic research institute in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Next to his practise he
has been curating the projectspace Artis, ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands and
has curated for Factor 44, Antwerp, Belgium. His work has (amongst other places)
been shown in Herman Teirlinck museum, Beersel, Belgium, Nicc Antwerp, Belgium,
Lokaal 01, Antwerp, Belgium, Fons Welters Gallery, Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
W139, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Keith Talent Gallery, London, UK, Camden Arts
Centre, London, UK, International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands, The
Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa, Ansan cultural centre, South Korea, at
Blank, Torino, Italy and the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.
Description
In my work I create extensions of existing architecture, art and literature. With
placing a second object next to it’s “mould”, the space between the two becomes
important, not to say the most important. It becomes the space where two identities
meet and coalesce. Within this resonance new meaning can reveal and articulate
itself. Both entities metamorphose into something different. Like concepts, being
subject to revision through time and context, their shape or meaning is not identical
in two spaces, this is the threshold where the object is undergoing a permanent
change and reinvents itself. I am interested in phenomena that take place in the
periphery of our attention. By emphasising this side-information and putting it in the
centre it has to be revised and rethought.
My practice can be described best as an emphemeral practice, I believe that it isn’t
necessarily interesting to pose or propose new imagery by materializing ideas. I
rather de-materialize, by making emphemeral things the public is asked to negotiate
these proposals in their own head without establishing or fixing a round set of images
to fix these proposals. We don’t need more imagery, we just need to actively re-think
and re-work existing signifiers to be able to tell new stories.
My artistic production can vary a lot in medium and form; a book, a performance, a story,
an object or a video can all be outcomes of the artistic research. The medium is not
important for me, each project or work defines it’s own parametres and thereby it’s most
adequate form. The work’s based in reality, a fact, an artwork, a sentence and redefines
and metamorphoses this reality by re-establishing the content once again, be it in a
different form or by re-frasing its content and thereby placing it back into the stream of
thought. My working method is used to determine the parametres of the work in general
and offer a field of possibilities. Methods are seldom repeated but changed or altered. This
aspect of negociating the way I work is for me as interesting as thinking out the work
itself.
Appelschraag (2004)