Richard Klapwijk

About

Richard Klapwijk (born 1968) lives in Belgium and Netherlands. Travelling between those two neigbouring countries he explores the differences and similarities between a population which share the same linguistic origin but are different in culture, attitude and political reality. The experiences from that he brings directly into his work as a an agent to conduct

Brought up u in well to do, white and priviliged family he discovered art untill late in his life. As a son of a father who was theologist and philosopher and a mother studying chemistry and mathematics he knew the power of debate, structure and knowledge from early on in his life.

The mostly untold family history plays a big part in his life. Being a distant descendent from Eliezer Kropveld, the first converted Jew who became a christian reformed minister in the netherlands (1870 Schoonebeek), he felt that this background played an decisive role in his own life. Th subsequent succecors of reformed ministers in the male and female anchestory line combined with the role that their jewishnes played during the second world war trickered the supersensivity for boundaries, background and language in the world of Richard Klapwijk

The work of Richard Klapwijk can be characterized as open, lighthearted and in the moment. He goes out into the world, up to the street and starts making things or just takes action. By doing that he creates and collects images. In real life and in his head. Through this open process he tells his stories and events. They become part of the spectators’ lives and vice versa, people (and what they share) can unexpectedly end up in one of his stories.

A special place is reserved for the objects. Seemingly casually looking and dispensable by their make-shift presence they are in fact the core of Richard’s work. They act as relics, as carriers of creative potency, meaning and hope. They function as religious tools to conduct, induce to open a new door, a discussion, another way of thinking.

Every presentation has characteristics of a ceremony, a religious manifesto or a spiritual experience Surfing on the waves of humor, seriousness, death and politics he gives insight in his mind. With lightness he attacks and shows modern society to us with it’s flaws and benefits.