IFP welcomes Johan Kleinjan who is doing a 6-month residency supported by Mondriaan Fund.
During Johan’s residency at the Institute for Provocation he plans to paint and draw architecture, buildings and street details that grab his interest. He will do this by painting and drawing ́en plain air ́ to be able to catch his subjects in a more direct way, and by working in the studio if he wants to change the perspective or work on a different size. Parallel to this, he will be making a series of portrait drawings of people he meets during his stay. These portraits will eventually be combined in a publication.
Before coming to Beijing he was a little worried the hutongs would be just grey ́old style ́ china and the rest of the city would only consist of uniform hi-rises. After his first week in Beijing however he’s discovered lots of details in the hutongs, and ́hidden ́ mid-to hi-rise buildings which he couldn’t have noticed by checking the streets on-line on his computer in Rotterdam. During his first week in Beijing this led him to obsessively document all these strange street-details, especially the various types of electric scooters with their wild colored and patterned winter screens/coats, and the ́unfinished ́ look a lot constructions and signs seem to have. He plans to incorporate these elements in the work he’s going to make in Beijing which will probably alter his original plans a bit, and might also lead to the creation of 3-D works.
