Europaeische_Werte | Stijn Peeters (NL)

About

Stijn Peeters lives and works in Eindhoven (NL). His artistic practice includes since his beginnings at the Koninklijke Academie voor Kunst en vormgeving’s Hertogenbosch (NL) and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (NL) mainly drawing and writing. – To that he says: The movement made by my hand supports my thinking. I store information better and it helps with analyzing what I have seen and experience and to internalize it. A bit later painting joined in too, always being nevertheless closely related to the sign, with regard to its gesture. The artist aims to show the first beginnings as well as the most achieved details and distinct phases of creation in his canvases, so that the viewer is able to witness the „Werdegang“ of each painting.

Peeters’ works have so far been presented in various solo and group exhibitions, predominantly in the Netherlands. In 1992 he received the Philip Morris Preis. His works are among other part of the collections of the Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo and the van Abbe Museum Eindhoven.

Stijn Peeters presents in the Esszimmer new works of the last 1-2 years and his publication project Ezel, of which there are currently 4 editions – all of them autobiographical. For this exhibition he also introduces a new publication called 10.000 (a number corresponding to the approximate estimation of missing refugee-children), which is half the size of the other Ezel magazines.

Ezel (EN: donkey) is based on Stijn Peeters‘ experiences as a human and as an artist. It reflects as well greater as everyday things, being interwoven in each other both intellectually and visually. Peeters processes in Ezel his analogous archive of diaries, letters, transcripts, telephone notes, books, newspapers and many other media of the non-digitalized world.

Art for me is the way in which I can involve myself with issues I deem of importance and why it is necessary for the individual to speak out and use his or her democratic right to do so. With this statement Peeters refers to his own struggles under the changing conditions in the Netherlands, where populism threatens the freedom of expression and suggests that the cultural and intellectual elite is located outside of society.