'Erik Visser's work needs no art critic's overlay, flush as it is with everything pleasureable you could possibly want to know in advance. I suppose I could draw a vague parallel with the work of the American artist Joe Brainard who similarly created works that feel as weighted with consciousness as they are ephemeral, and that, in the words of the art critic Robert Rosenblum, 'look backwards, sideways, and forwards, (but) refuse to join the march of history, staking out its own magical territory.' In trying to figure out how its beauty works for myself, I've nestled Visser's art into the currents and drifts of Dutch contemporary art, finding not obvious but rather emotional kinships with artists like the late Rene Daniels, whose paintings forged a strange and deep love between whimsy and symbol, or with Rob Scholte's paintings from the 1980s, which threw a far, far more rigidly organized party for the deadened iconography of advertising and the imagination's ghosts. But there are so many other ways to think about Visser's work, backlit as it seems to be by the histories of fairytale illustration and visionary comix as practiced by the likes of Windsor McKay or George Herriman, frontlit and relieved of gravity as it is by his unique storehouse of fantasies, wit, tender feelings, and sadness. There's art one likes so much one wants to present it with the preface of a particularized critical lens, and then there's art like Visser's that one wants to thrust forward without a word, with only a wide eyed confidence that, at least in this case, seeing truly is believing.' -- DC, 'The Unburst Bubbles and Quickie Masterstrokes of Petit Paradis', May 23, 2007
Erik Visser interviewed by Thomas Moore
I just wanna start off by asking for a bit of a biography: Where about are you from? How long have you been making art? Can you remember your first introduction to art?
I am from Rotterdam, which is the second city in the Netherlands. I was born there and lived around the suburbs as a teenager. I now live in the city again. My neighbourhood is an interesting mix of immigrants from Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, the Dutch Antilles and probably more. I went to the Academy of Fine Arts here after graduating high school but was totally lost the first time. After a few years as an art school drop-out I applied again and finished it successfully. When the school teachers came along for the examination, a friend and I covered the whole floor of our studio with paper shreds like it was snow and hid underneath.
I made a large house out of frames of lemonade straws. You could go inside. It was nice for kids as well. I decided not to do painting anymore. I began drawing again a few years after.
I remember in high school I took art lessons that included a little art history too. Very very basic. At the examinations you had to tell which style belonged to a painting. A classmate wrote that Caravaggio was an impressionist, because the light was important in his painting. Later at the Academy I did not much better. I dated work vaguely like late Medieval. The teacher would then write "yes, but how late?" under my answer with a red pen. Still, I think I am the one among my friends who can date art styles the easiest as long it's not pre-Baroque.
(continued)
Show
Peel
Dracula
Boxing
Let's get over it
Sea Lion
Banana boat
Banana
Boiler
United Collars
Dandy and Flirt
Dizzie
Elephant
Flamingo
Mirror
Cellphone
Salut
Sebastian
Shoeblack
Hammam
Contortionist
Trampoline
Two winks melted me down
Erik of het kleine insektenboek
Apple
Blauwedas
Bukken Strand
Giraffe
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