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ResumeMAURICE SCHELTENS
Working in the fields of fashion, art and advertisement, the Dutch photographer Maurice Scheltens creates still-lifes that are both hyper realistic and completely artificial. Objects taken from the worlds of commerce, fashion and design are removed from their natural habitats and placed in a new environment, often exposing them to uneasy conditions. Remote controls, haute couture dresses and cut-out pictures of fruits, vegetables and plants are dangling on cords, balancing on other objects or left all alone, lost in a monochrome background.
For a recent series of photographs, Scheltens placed some ordinary household items - a fruitbox, a folding crate, a garbage bag - on a turn table and photographed them spinning full-speed. Paradoxically, the resulting blurry objects have a strong pictorial, almost graphic clarity: they are transformed into pure form, pure shape, pure colour. A similar 'modernist' aesthetics is apparent in a series of photographs for the magazine 'Fantastic Man'. Here, Scheltens arranged a collection of knitted sweaters and scarfs in such a way that the geometric patterns and straight lines, planes and surfaces conjure up the 1920's tradition of Russian constructivism, thus combining the lavish richness of fashion with the puritanical strictness of Modernism.
Scheltens has been focusing on still-life photography ever since he graduated photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, The Netherlands in 1995. Essential to his work is the process in the studio where he constructs his settings. Such as a graphic designer or a painter works layer by layer, Scheltens continuously moves things around, painstaking joining pieces together to form a studied and balanced composition. He often chooses to expose the materiality of the process. Pieces of tape, visible lengths of fishing line and cocktail sticks have not been retouched, but are left as evidence of the time-consuming, handcrafted way of working. These 'imperfect' odds and ends reveal the intrinsic paradox in Scheltens's work. Although each composition is incredibly controlled, it allows room for the false and fictitious. The extremely stylized and seductive still-lifes might seem at ease within the perfectionist worlds of high fashion and high culture they refer to, they also expose the artificial, contrived nature of these worlds.
Scheltens deliberately chooses to operate both in the fields of applied and autonomous art and use them as breeding ground for one another. He borrows from the visual languages of fashion, advertising and Dutch symbolic painting the importance of styling and communication, but employs it as a tool to investigate conditioned ways of looking. Cut off from their comfortable surroundings of give codes and meanings, Scheltens places his 'real' objects and cut-outs in staged, illusionary frameworks. In this way, he triggers us to reflect on the accepted and conventional codes of visual culture, showing how easy it is for us to fall under the seductive spell that objects hold out for us today.
Text by Nina Folkersma
PUBLICATION
Another Man
A, B, C, . . Magazine
Arena Homme Plus
Beaux Arts Magazine
Big
Culture+Travel
Dazed & Confused
Dif
Doingbird
E&A Magazine
Fantastic Man
Foam magazine
Intersection
Le Monde Deux
Liberation
Livraison
l'Officiel
Mode Depesche
New York Times
Ofr Magazine
Paradis
Rendez-Vous
Re- Magazine
Sec
V
View on Colour
Visionair
Volkskrant Magazine
Wallpaper
COMMISSION
Adidas
Audi
Cristal Saint Louis
Colette Allgone
Delta Lloyd
Droogdesign
France Telecom
Habitat
Hermes
Hollandamericaline
Joop
K-swiss
Lancel
Mercedes
Newman
Nike
Novib
Playstation
Red
Sony
Telfort
Umbro
Uniqlo
Vitra
VPRO television
WATdesign
EXHIBITION
Arnhem Fashion Biennale, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, 2007
Arnhem Fashion Biennale, CBKG, Arnhem, 2007
De God van Nederland, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 2006
Foresight, Kunstverein, Augsburg, 2006
Kitchen, Seoul Art Center Design Museum, South Korea, 2006
Fashion NL 'the next generation', GEM Museum, The Hague, 2006
Droogdesign, Furniture Fair, Milan, 2006
Apartment, Scholten&Baijings, Galerie Binnen, Amsterdam, 2005
Bouquet Series, Gallery Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam, 2005
Natura Artis Magistra, Artproject for zoo, Amsterdam, 2005
Nominee Discovery Award, Rencontres-Arles, 2005
Shift, Quartair, Den Haag, 2005
l'Insense Pays-Bas, Louis Vuitton, Tokyo, 2004
Printed Matter, Gallery Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam, 2004
l'Insense Pays-Bas, Colette, Paris, 2003
Solo Exhibition, Gallery 2RC, Rome, 2003
Snippets, Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem, 2003
Passion for Pose, Frisia Museum, Spanbroek, 2003
Fridge, Gallery Fraich Attitude, Paris, 2002
Guesteditor for Catalogue Magazine, UVA, Amsterdam, 2002
Solo Exhibition, Fashion / Photography Festival, Hyeres, 2002
Dutch Touch, Gallery 2RC, Rome, 2001
Dutch Open, Patrionaat / Fietsznfabriek, Haarlem, 2001
Eclips / O Solo Mio, W139, Amsterdam, 2000
Selected for Fashion / Photography Festival, Hyeres, 1999
Now tm, Fargfabriken, Stockholm, 1999
Shopping For Bags, Nijmegen, 1999
Tegenlicht, Paraplufabriek, Nijmegen, 1999
Next Image, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1999
Dutch Design Dead, Lace, Los Angeles, 1998
Raw Skin, Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam, 1998
Fish & Ashtrays, Gallery Exedra, Hilversum, 1998
Direct Hit, Gallery 2.5 / 4.5 and A.C.F., Amsterdam, 1997
text from mauricescheltens
