Fleur van Dodewaard’s Minimalist Series Explores the Relationship Between Photography and Sculpture

Before studying photography at the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam-based artist Fleur van Dodewaard completed a bachelor in Theatre Studies. This could explain her ‘play’ with form, light and the limitations of the (photographer’s) frame. Van Dodewaard’s clean yet complex images are a reflection on sculpture, painting and the clichés of the photographic medium. We recently talked to her about her latest series Sculptures Economiques.

How did you come up with the idea for Sculptures Economiques and what’s the basic idea behind it?
“The French initiative 12-52 invited me to contribute to their project with a new work. The project focuses on the relationship between photography and sculpture—my work often takes place on the border of these two media. With Sculptures Economiques I’ve turned the most simple sculptural form, a small wooden bar, into a series of ‘photographic sculptures’. The photographs show 25 ‘modified’ versions of the object—5 colors and 5 shapes and all combinations. Because of the manipulation, the bar you look at in the photograph has and has not existed, making the works occur both as window to a past reality and a present object.”

So the work was first shown as a virtual gallery? How do you present the series in the exhibition space?
“The 12-52 project started off as a virtual gallery and will be finalized in the form of a printed publication. My main focus is the printed, physical, form in the exhibition space. But the multiplicity of possible manifestations of the medium and how they relate to one another are of interest to me. I’m aware of the fact that most people who are familiar with my work have seen it only on the Internet. What they don’t know is that there is quite a difference between my work on the screen and the ‘live’ version. On the screen the images look neat. On the physical prints you see that the work is handmade over a period of time. There are scratches of the objects having fallen down, pieces of tape, nail-holes, paint drops from earlier try-outs, dirt, dust.”

This post was contributed by photographer Antje Peters.

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