In yesterday's post we looked at a comic book anti-hero shooting colourful, yet lethal, polka-dots through his gauntlets. Let's continue the thread today by looking at an artist who also shoots his bright and brilliant colours – albeit they aren't lethal – on walls and canvases, Rutger de Vries.
The Dutch multidisciplinary artists who trained as a graphic designer, may fall into the graffiti art category, but he defines his work as Post-Graffiti Art.
De Vries doesn't spray his colours on walls himself, but directs – as if he were an orchestra conductor – the flood of colours from fire extinguishers containing different, and often complementary, shades of paint. Released on a white background, the colours run freely down the canvases, bleeding and forming colourful bright and bold compositions, merging together in a puddle beneath.
The result is visually striking and vaguely reminiscent of the avalanches of colours covering pseudo post-apocalyptic environments created by Katharina Grosse.
But his works also invite people to ponder about the issue of authorship in art: De Vries employs some of the materials of street artists, but his artworks are made "mechanically" through the use of self-built painting machines (at times he lets the machines linked to a computer create his work thanks to a special software). So the machines work as artists under his direction and, in this way, De Vries investigates the scope of his own authorship.
Expect the fashion world to co-opt De Vries soon: his expansive painting installations could be created live during a runway show or could maybe be used for a fashion/textile performance in which extinguishers could be employed to decorate a dress to evoke Alexander McQueen's "No. 13" catwalk show (S/S 1999) with robotic arms spraying in black and yellow a white cotton muslin dress donned by Shalom Harlow.
Image credits for this post
Images 1 to 4: Copyright & Courtesy Rutger de Vries
Images 5: Shalom Harlow, Alexander McQueen, "No. 13" catwalk show (S/S 1999)