Interview with artist Jaap Scheeren
Interview with artist Jaap Scheeren
Visual artist Jaap Scheeren (1979) works mainly with photography. In both his art and his personality, he approaches everyday reality as something that is never quite what it seems: there is always more to be found – a sense of both wonder and attraction. Teus Hagen visited his studio in Amsterdam Noord. They talked about his way of working, his fascination with the dynamics between humans, nature and climate, and especially about his new work ‘Flipping the Bird’ – three photographic works, printed on billboards of six by three meters – which can be seen at the NDSM wharf from October 18 onwards.
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Jaap Scheeren in his workshop. Photo: Teus Hagen
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Jaap Scheeren in his workshop. Photo: Teus Hagen
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Jaap Scheeren in his workshop. Photo: Teus Hagen
Visual artist Jaap Scheeren (1979) works mainly with photography. In both his art and his personality, he approaches everyday reality as something that is never quite what it seems: there is always more to be found – a sense of both wonder and attraction. Teus Hagen visited his studio in Amsterdam Noord. They talked about his way of working, his fascination with the dynamics between humans, nature and climate, and especially about his new work ‘Flipping the Bird’ – three photographic works, printed on billboards of six by three meters – which can be seen at the NDSM wharf from October 18 onwards.
The front door of Jaap’s studio has a large model of an ice cream cone attached to it. “People sometimes bump their heads into it,” says Jaap, after which the very same thing happens to me. I’m meeting him just as he and his colleague are having a much-needed smoke break. There’s a lot of work to do today, like finishing the new project ‘Flipping the Bird’. This becomes clear by looking at his studio: a cozy chaos with lots of colorful objects, probably from previous projects, that invite further inspection, like a pop-art museum space where you carefully want to walk past every object and read a caption-text, wondering whether that one half-empty cup of coffee isn’t also a work of art.
I first ask Jaap about his new project: the three photographic works displayed on three immense billboards at the NDSM shipyard. For Jaap, it all started with a direct interaction with nature. “A few years ago I had the feeling that I wanted to search for my connection to nature. That’s how I ended up walking in the woods and going off into dune areas – because that’s where the biggest threat to this country comes from the sea. During these walks, I came across all kinds of animals and plants, and I started recognizing all kinds of things in this environment”. Before we continue, Jaap encourages me to scroll through the larger collection of photos that has emerged from these walks. The photos contain all kinds of nature images that never fail to speak to my imagination. From a branch strongly reminiscent of the mouth of a crocodile, to a tree trunk that looks a lot like Van Gogh’s Starry Night. “Sometimes I would just sit under a tree, stare around for a while, or lie down on the ground. If you look closely, you can find a lot in this kind of setting and let your imagination run wild”, the Nijmegen-born says.
Sometimes I have to tell my mother things like “don’t throw away your food” and “think for a moment about how you deal with your surroundings”, but she won’t really take that from me.
Still, these interactions with the natural landscape also brought him to less positive insights. “The longer I was there, the more I got the idea that nature wasn’t really welcoming me.” This idea, he explains, arose from simple moments, such as the patience and care with which he had to approach animals before taking a picture. Fortunately, some animals did tolerate the artist’s presence, such as the ‘angry swan’, one of the three pictures from ‘Flipping the Bird’: “I was allowed to be near him for half an hour, and then he had had enough of it. I came across the climax of the story when I walked past a couple of pine trees that grew in such a way that it seemed like they were showing me their middle fingers”. So what started as a search for connection, resulted in a feeling of disapproval. “That fact – that nature is actually better off without us – I then started to treat in this series”, Jaap concludes.
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'Flipping the Bird' by Jaap Scheeren
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'Flipping the Bird' by Jaap Scheeren
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'Flipping the Bird' by Jaap Scheeren
Contemporary media often confront us with threatening images of nature in the context of the climate crisis – burning forests and melting ice caps – but Jaap takes a slightly more peculiar approach in his work. In Flipping the Bird, some animals that raise their middle finger have become the leading theme. In each of the three photographs shown in Jaap’s work at the NDSM-wharf, an animal greets the viewer with this cynical gesture. But why did Jaap choose to depict the animal as an angry messenger in this work? “Animals are quite close to humans. Many of us have pets. An animal can let us know what it thinks of us, show an angry look and make such an identification, more easily and clearly than, for example, a tree or a bush. Humans simply identify more strongly with fauna than with flora”.
Despite the habituation and comfort with which humans have learnt to treat animals, Jaap believes that interactions with animals can also lead to innovative insights. Especially when it comes to our relationship with nature – a contemporary and often political discussion that centers on people and polarizes them – we would do well to look at and listen to animals more, he thinks. “Nature and animals are just distanced from us enough that you still want to accept the things they’re saying. Meanwhile, for example, I have to tell my mother things like “don’t throw away your food” and “think for a moment about how you deal with your surroundings” for weeks on end, but from me, she won’t really take that.
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Photo: Jaap Scheeren
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Photo: Jaap Scheeren
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Photo: Jaap Scheeren
It’s Jaap’s aim to confront and stimulate the viewer to think, and the large, open spaces of the NDSM-wharf are a perfect match for this as an exhibition space. “There are of course many different kinds of people that visit the NDSM. It’s a very nice area to get a lot of visitors. This is thanks to the hospitality, events, workshops and just the space you can experience there. Also, in an industrial environment, my works are in a good place, because as a counterpart this enhances the natural images”. When asked why he chose precisely these three images from his broad collection, he answers: “I chose those middle fingers, because they allow me to evoke a very direct reaction. A work in the outdoor space is supposed to both appeal and challenge. When you walk past it, you immediately know what it means, and then you can decide for yourself about what you think of it and how you deal with it”.
By telling too much about my work, I actually destroy it myself.
It is not the first time that Jaap has established a work of art in cooperation with Stichting NDSM shipyard. In the winter of 2017-2018 he created the exhibition ‘For Keeps / To Keep’, in which he photographed everyday views of the NDSM shipyard, while in each image something unusual or fairytale happened. This absurdism, with which banal images also subtly appeal to the imagination, returns in ‘Flipping the Bird’. Jaap emphasizes that the directness of the animals and their gestures must remain nuanced. “It must repel yet seduce. For me this tone is very important because it brings people in, brings them into your thoughts. Humor or absurdism simply help in making you want to think about something”.
Jaap is satisfied when his work causes people to wonder and therefore likes to let his images speak without explaining too much himself. This becomes clear with a brief look at his website. “If I tell too much about my work, I’ll actually destroy it myself. This point becomes clearer when he explains the title ‘Flipping the Bird’: this is an old-British slang word which literally means ‘raise your middle finger’, and is also a nod to the animal kingdom. “But at the same time it’s a pity when I explain things like that; I’m actually ruining that first thought and question you had. And that is much more interesting than my explanation”, he says thoughtfully.
By telling an anecdote, Jaap’s work poses challenging questions, but he prefers to leave these questions open. “Telling an anecdote is a good description of my work”, he agrees, “because it’s just about seeing possibilities in the world around you”. Jaap also likes to collect stories himself. “From friends, from books I read, actually everything that happens around me. And then I simply decide to make it into something new”.
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Photo: Jaap Scheeren
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Photo: Jaap Scheeren