RUUD VAN EMPEL (Breda, 1958)
"Study for 24 women n.4", 2000.
Epsonprint on paper, copy 1/5.
Signed and dated on the back.
Size: 44 x 56 cm; 66 x 78 cm (frame).
"Van Empel's virtuosity lies in his ability to combine in photography the kind of ideas anchored in painting (historical references, the power of a gaze, the use of colour) and film (structure with multiple images and the power of a narrative), and to do so on a large scale", writes Deborah Klochko in the catalogue "Ruud van Empel Photoworks 1995-2010".renowned Dutch photographer and visual artist. He studied at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunst St. Joost in Breda in the 1970s. In the late 1980s he moved to Amsterdam to work on his career as a visual artist. Her first photographic series were The Office (1995-2001), Study for Women (1999-2002) and Study in Green (2003). The Groninger Museum presented her first solo exhibition in 1999. She made the international breakthrough with her series World-Moon-Venus, which was shown at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Curator Deborah Klochko invited him to participate in the exhibition entitled "Picturing Eden" at the George Eastman House. In particular, the World series, which explores the theme of innocence, made a deep impression. Van Empel placed neatly dressed black boys and girls in paradisiacal settings of untouched, non-existent nature. Interest in and appreciation of the series continues to this day all over the world. The breakthrough in the United States also brought renewed attention to Dutch museums. Van Empel has had solo exhibitions at the Het Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen, the Groninger Museum and the NoordBrabants Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch. Since the international recognition of his work gave Van Empel the status of an artist with his own independent formal language, he has progressively expanded his oeuvre with the series Theatre, from 2010 to 2013, and Souvenir, which offered a charged image of his youth in Breda. This series was acquired by the NoordBrabants Museum. But there is always a darker, if not always obvious, side to this. Ruud Schenk, curator of the Groninger Museum, wrote about this aspect in reference to the series Study for Women (2000-2002): As a viewer, you feel that there is something wrong with the depiction of the women: they are not completely real, but tend to be a mixture of real women and shop window mannequins. This generates a certain discomfort, a discomfort that comes close to what was described as "das Unheimliche" (the uncanny) at the beginning of the 20th century". Although the photographic images seem to capture an era, it is hardly possible to assign a date to any of them. This timeless element in Van Empel's work has taken on a different meaning in his recent work, as he addresses themes such as transience and vanity in his Still Life series of 2014, and also portrays older people as in the portrait of an older woman in the Sunday series (2012), or in the Nude series (2014), in which he questions the model's pose and the aesthetics of the nude. His work has been reviewed in countless publications and he has held important international exhibitions, not only in institutions specialising in photography but also in renowned museums of modern visual art.