Koen Kievits

‘Innenansicht des Gesellschaftshauses’ (Residency at ArToll Kunstlabor, Bedburg-Hau)

The ‘Community house’ is one of the buildings located on the grounds of the LVR-Klinik in Bedburg-Hau in Germany and served as a place where staff and patients would gather for various activities, parties and theatre plays. Before I went on the residency at ArToll I encountered many old postcards of the clinic, showing the various buildings around the area. A few of them showed interior views of the buildings and one of which drew my attention, since it seemed to be out of place. It showed a large decorated ballroom filled with chairs, yet completely abandoned, as if the reception that was about to take place for some reason never came to be. The room looks desolate and foreboding, a strange gloomy atmosphere is present in the grey sepia-toned postcard, which leads me to think that in the actual room no colors were present as well. The stage screams in pain, a large gaping void.

With me I only brought a grey-toned sketchpad and I decided to paint this room piece by piece and with one brush, working in rows. The results resembles the space, yet physically it would not be possible to exist. Since I would install the rows I finished I wasn’t able to fully connect all the lines and architectural features of the building, giving the work a ‘kaleidoscopic’ perspective as a result.

‘Freude’ & ‘Ein leerer Raum’

Two photographs served as reference for these smaller paintings. The first showed the ballroom completely empty, with a giant chandelier and ribbons cascading down from the ceiling. The other photograph was taken by myself, when we were invited to visit the now renovated gesellschaftshaus. In a chamber at the backside of the ballroom I found a collection of chairs which were stacked almost to the ceiling. I imagined the old chairs that were previously used would be put here whenever there was no event taking place.

‘Das Verschwinden von Schloss Moyland’

During a visit to Schloss Moyland, which is located quite close to ArToll I came across an old picture of soldiers posing in front of a grand fireplace, with emptied frames around them. During and after the war the castle was looted and emptied by various unknown parties. Whatever happened to all the paintings of the castle remains a mystery, as well as who might have taken which paintings. I was specifically struck by the act of removing the images and I imagined how the space of the castle, which these men on the photograph were in, would have looked like, stripped of any image. the photograph again suited as a basis and the space around it grew piece by piece.