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PAUL
KAMPER
is a versatile plastic artist with a unique and contrary to
orthodoxy style. After private study with the well-known Georg Muche
of the Bauhaus, Kamper visited various academies in Paris where he
became acquainted with Gauchisme,
New Realisme and Cobra. After an initial period of making images of
mad-comic animals, he tried to develop his own style of rendering
landscapes in which elementary powers such as earth, water and fire
played a role. He met like-spirited artists who wanted to break with Taschisme
in order to achieve new inspiration; together they formed the
so-called ‘Academie
du feu’.
Paul Kamper had much success in Paris, New York and in Germany, won
three artistic prizes and sold various works to museums and
collectors. The National Bibliothec of France in Paris bought several
photographics for the collection.
Kamper remain in Paris for 20 years. Then he received a master-student fellowship from UNESCO to study at Gedai art academy in Tokyo classical Japanese art influenced by Zen. After he returned, he fell in love with the nature of Zeeland with broad but simple landscapes and the famous light of the province. Under that, he made large photographic prints on linen to which he sensitively added color, retaining the essence of the landscape in taut, almost abstract lines. He presented the seascape of Dutch weather through broad, horizontal light. He took the technique a step farther: a graphic print of a photograph was mounted as a black-white transparency a few centimeters from a canvas; in that way it became possible to elaborate it into a strongly plastic form. An entirely new elaboration existed . The landscape of light and motion so fascinated him that he established his atelier and residence in a small village in Zeeland. After that he discovered stainless steel; that was a new medium for him. With little equipment, he bent glossy plates into simple forms so that they could be hung up in order to move with the wind. They seemed weightlessly to join the surroundings as sculptured wind! Then a further phase he filled in the stainless steel sculptures with formed acrylic-glass plates that were lighted in an extraordinary manner by multi-colored little LEDs in various colors. It produced an effect as if only the edges were visible. They became not just ‘wind-sculptures’ but also ‘light-sculptures.’ Movement is change, growth is life. There is in nature and the cosmos no fixed imaging of things; they change in form and in relation to each other. Everything flows. (Panta Rhei) In addition in two large installation, Kamper gave expression to such thoughts: in 1995 in ‘Skymirror’ [Hemelspiegel] in the Great Church in Veere; and in 1999 in ‘Earth-Light-Water—steel reflections’ in Waterland Neeltje Jans on the dam at the mouth of the East Scheld [Oosterscheldekering]. Paul Kamper extended the tradition of Dutch landscape art in a new project under the title, “The Sky of Zeeland Gripped in the Nursery School.’ It comprises large clouds that move in space. This was to be seen in 2003 in Burgh-Haamstede and then in 2006 in Kulturzentrum Friedenskirche in Krefeld, Germany. For Dynamic ART Delta 2005, he made two sculptures: 'Sky Drill' and 'Look Towards...' Brought in movement by the wind, the 'drill' expressed the longing to break loose from the earth an transit the heavens. 'Look Towards...' looked towards the horizon and expressed the same desire. Nico Out |