About Kamiel de Waal
Kamiel de Waal’s “media-horny” practice revolves around making shows (needless to say not-showing has become an equal engine for his practice) that honestly foster “quality” and whatever that still means. Past shows combine the benefit-of-doubt “genius” with the not-that-bulletproof hubris of an artist’s first hits. As is, de Waal’s “oeuvre” is sandwiched between what can be possibly made and what can be made possible.
To keep things clearly but sexy
Kamiel de Waal’s work plays with the one hit wonder dimension, the supposed genius or eureka- factor. A dog, for example, is made as simple as connecting some lines, some tubes. The work elicits a kind of cultivated ‘ugh’ – it seems so simple, yet it works so well.
Kamiel de Waal’s work attest to a hybrid and sardonic conception of taste, status, connoisseurship perhaps. My taste is too good to be this poor, the artist confessed one night, looking back perhaps more visionary than thought at the time. There are so many vases in Kamiel’s work, one wonders how many interiors the artist wishes to occupy or ornate with them.
Kamiel de Waal’s work is highly quality-sensitive. In Kamiel’s studio photographs, the artist exhibits the quality of explicit mistakes. The green screen in these pictures is rendered totally obsolete: the all- consuming Metz flash-light on the Hasselblad camera is mirrored in the green surface, showcasing its edges, stains, its blind spots. In other words, there’s no such thing as a lucky shot.
As if building up to a grand finale, Kamiel realized his biggest work to date for his graduation show: a defunct bouncy house, een springkasteel, in fact modeled after a boat. All of its entrances (or exits) are sealed – there’s no gate or door in sight. Its air supply is manipulated, the boat subsequently inflates and deflates. Deflated, one glimpses an utter void: the boat has no interior. The green color, too, is terribly dominant yet strangely off.
