Within my work I research “the alternative.” Different ways of seeing, thinking and living as described in counterculture movements, speculative fiction and anti-hegemonic philosophical thought, influence my practice. In my paintings I use a broad range of materials, oil paint, wall paint, acrylics, spray paint, permanent marker, lacquer, epoxy, sand, dirt, glue, silicone, dragon blood, white spirit, flowers, and more. The unpredictability of mixing these materials makes me feel like an alchemist or witch of sorts. By mixing not only materials but also styles I aim at exploring ambivalence and ambiguity - concepts which I believe to be powerful, as things can be both ways at the same time. An escalator cannot break, but will just become stairs. And as such uselessness constitutes a function in itself. My paintings could be referred to as ‘ambiguous abstractions,’ floating somewhere between abstraction and representation.
Maybe paintings are useless and as such reflect on nothing other than themselves, maybe they simultaneously have the power to change the conditions of the world, exactly because they don't serve any purpose. My grandfather told me nothing is something, and I am stuck with that, probably for the rest of my life. Inside his cigarette box was written that those who know do not speak. I do speak sometimes.
Bobby Veldhuizen (b. 1994 in Amsterdam) lives and works in
Amsterdam.
In 2022, she will receive a BA in Fine Arts
from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.