About

Statements & Bio

Magic

I am a traveller escaping reality settings

A true escape artist emanated from the darkness

Longing to discover new roads

Navigated by dimensions not yet seen

It is Between open borders and Isolation

where I become aware of my existence

The In-Between world is my home

Moving and staying

Staying and moving

Reconstructing the reality I find myself in

Locked in dependency

Trying to break out

A new skin for the soul to wear

Seeking morality

Through the eyes of others I see myself

My existence

My presence

My environment

My skin

Imagining the future

Going elsewhere

My sight made out of choices

I haven’t been there before

That is where the magic happens.

Nothingness

How can I be human?

Did I put myself out of the game as a person through my attempts of Self-actualization?

If our human existence is limited to just a functionality within a system of infinite expansion, then I think this is the case.

In the man-made world of measurability and controllability, there is no place for the unpredictable and vulnerable human being. It is therefore not surprising that machines and computers take our places. What is even more surprising is that we attribute machines to life while they should be life supportive to me. Has our species been abandoned and will there only be room for artificial intelligence in the future? Transhumanism also comes into play here. Our body is not good enough and has a limited life span so away with it! What happens now to the self-confidence of man and what does he still have to believe now that he is increasingly aware of the fact that life makes no sense? How do we relate to nature that we ourselves are part of? Can we still live from nature in the age of Anthropocene? Is a humble position based on non-human knowledge possible?

Positioning myself

As a designer and artist, I explore how people can reposition themselves as a form of life in a meaningless and a non-human world. A reconstruction of the reality where man is put back into a man and the replaced man is put back into the Cosmos. In search of new existential concepts I sometimes find myself outside society in the in-between world. This outer-inner area which is nowhere but at the same time is everywhere goes into isolation and gives me the opportunity to enter into different worlds of being. This is the ultimate freedom for me. Perhaps the in-between world is a metaphor for my inner world that I describe as: "Between open borders and Isolation" In short BOB & I. This is also the name of my hybrid multidisciplinary project in which different art forms inspire each other and together create a total world that is gradually unfolded.

Materialization

My work is characterized by a layered configuration and a tension between figuration and abstraction. Textiles are often used in the compositions that I compile. These consist of, among other things, pulled apart fabrics of jute or cotton with or without painting over it. For this, I have developed my own method, which I call Imprint. Photography is also an important medium which I incorporate in different ways into an artwork, possibly combined with painting and Imprint.

Lawrence Kwakye 2020

'Undeniable talent'

Lawrence Kwakye (1972, Utrecht) painted his first painting when he was thirteen and with it, unknowingly opened the door to his artistic career. The famous writer and illustrator Tomi Ungerer called him an ‘undeniable talent’ at the time and compared him to the main character in Albert Camus’ novel ‘The Stranger’. As the son of a Ghanaian father and Hungarian mother, raised in the Netherlands, he was constantly exposed to surprises and changes in life and as such automatically developed a ‘contrasting’ view of the world, essential for the magical layering in his later work. Nothing is what you think it is.
After secondary school, Lawrence completed his study ‘Man and Leisure time’ at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, where Lidewij Edelkoort was a guiding force. Unmistakable heritage from that time is the functional and conceptual impact of the many paintings he continued to create alongside his job as a designer. Until 2010 when he changed course, established himself as an independent artist and his artistic career gained momentum.
Kwakye’s cultural diversity, his sense of aesthetics, his technical innovative drive and his fascination for transition, or in other words the process of change is clearly reflected in his current work. The result is accessible, the viewer picks it up straight away, but then seduces him into a discussion about what you actually see; it is what it is. Harmony versus disharmony. Kwakye’s visual work keeps on communicating.