About

Michiel Kluiters (1971, Amsterdam) makes monumental, painterly photographs of empty spaces that you can step right into. The work is on the plane between sculpture, photography and painting. They are images of improvised architectural scale models that he builds in his studio and then photographs in razor-sharp detail. The combination of light and shadow, point of view, perspective, color, texture and details result in an alienating effect with a signature all its own. The images seem primarily addressed to the hands rather than the eyes: they long to be touched, stroked, felt.

The spaces are reminiscent of unfinished utopian buildings or abandoned ruins, still under construction or already decaying. This introduction of a sense of time - of something indicative of future completion or of a lingering memory of something irrevocably past - contributes to the inherent instability of these works. By choosing to make photograph rather than show the object, the work lingers on that precious boundary between presence and absence, between reality and fiction.

'My concern is to orchestrate that one stilled two-dimensional image in which all those facets come together very precisely. It is important that the viewer has no clear idea of the true size of the space shown that has been photographed and whether or not it really exists. I consciously play with this, by not clearly defining things like scale the effect is charged and the viewer is challenged to fill it in for themselves. Ever since his academy days, Kluiters has been concerned with building spaces to scale. Initially with the goal of creating his own defined "workspace" within the chaos of the Rietveld Academy's studio building. Soon these spaces an sich became his focus. After the Rietveld, he went to the Ateliers where he further developed his work under the guidance of artists such as Jan Dibbets, Marien Schouten, Georg Herold and Rita McBride. He became fascinated with how he could visually affect an existing space through photographic blow-ups of his created spaces. First with large photographic works and later with wall-filling photo installations. Over time, this developed further into architectural interventions, video installations and sculptures in public spaces. In contrast to the many in-situ works and art commissions, he very consciously strives for an autonomous image in his current approach.

Kluiters' current working method is quite irrational. He allows the crudely built models to emerge under his hands without a preconceived and elaborate plan. It lets the material itself be partly the inspiration for what he creates, the way he handles it and what he sees through it. As a result, the final image is layered and of deeper meaning than reality indicates. It is not simply a passage to another space, but gives access to the personal experience of the creator.

Michiel Kluiters / article by Steven Humblet / 2022 / English

The work of Dutch visual artist Michiel Kluiters (*1971) could be described as an attempt to reimagine our relationship to the space that surrounds us. Although his approach is quite diverse – ranging from commissioned artworks for the public space to interventions in the museum or gallery space and the production of a series of photographical works – he always seems to hark back to the model of photography. Each strategy that he uses is based on a structural element of photography: from its relationship to reproducibility, to its so-called transparency and its specific form of evoking spatiality.

Kluiters’ reliance on photography seems at first a bit strange. A photograph is nothing more than a two-dimensional surface, a thin sheet of paper on which an image seems to float. How could this flat thing that has almost no volume, no presence as an object, be used to disturb our spatial awareness? Well, these observations might hold true when we focus on the material substrate of the photograph, but not when we engage with the subject that it depicts. Indeed, we experience the imagined space on that flat sheet of paper as a rather faithful rendering of the three-dimensional world we inhabit. Responsible for this illusion of depth is the optical system of the camera which is constructed in such a way that it adheres to the laws of perspective as they were defined in the 15th and 16th century. This is what makes photographs so good at creating a convincingly spatial effect, even up to a point where it seems that the viewer gets the impression that it is possible to enter the space of the photograph and wander about in it. This effect is of course most outspoken in the stereoscopic views that were a recurring fad in the 19th and early 20th century and had a recent flare-up in the 1980s and 1990s with the advent of holograms. These stereoscopic images enhanced the idea of photography as an immersive medium, capable of completely absorbing the attention of the viewer. Moreover, this particular spatial effect of stereoscopic views and the immersive experience that comes with it, seemed to finally fulfil a desire that haunted photography from the start: the desire to be a perfect copy of reality.

Whereas the stunning effect of the stereoscopic image requires a seemingly naïve submission to the immersive experience offered by it, Kluiters tries to elude a more critical response from his viewers. Playful as his work might be, he aims to question our idea of what it means to make the world (or an object) visible through technological means. Or rather, how making something visible could also lead it to become invisible at the same time. An intriguing example of this is the work Mesh (2005) which he realised in the exhibition space of Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam. A particular aspect of that space is the presence of a single column which stands somewhat lost in the middle of the space. In his intervention, Kluiters decided to multiply that column by placing eight copies of the original throughout the space. Each copy was placed equidistantly from each other. For a visitor who has never visited the gallery before, the experience would have been quite bewildering. Not aware of the ‘normal’ space, she would have wondered where the work of the artist could be seen. Through sheer repetition, Kluiters broke the spatial articulation of the gallery, creating a whimsical labyrinth that is at the same time clearly visible and yet remains oddly elusive. It is, however, important to draw attention to the specific photographic nature of this intervention: although it does not use photographic images as such, its reliance on duplication and reproducibility through technological means makes it reminiscent of the photographic process in general. Add to this the strange intermingling of visibility and invisibility that is at the core in this particular work and the whole set-up seems even more indebted to the photographic system. After all, is a photograph also not a (utterly convincing) representation of something that is not there? Does not every photography linger on this precious borderline between presence and absence, between visibility and invisibility? This would at least help explain the further development of Kluiters’ oeuvre in the direction of photography.

The Art of Illusion

Indeed, after Mesh, Kluiters started producing large-scale photographs that created the suggestion of opening up new spaces in existing ones. A beautiful example of this is the wall-filling installation Room II which he created for the exhibition Phantom Limb at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (2017–2018). The large work was based on a photograph of a sculptural scale model that the artist had built in his studio. In this case, the sculpture was a meticulously constructed scale model of an extended hallway. He then blew the photograph of this concocted space up to a large-format print which the then attached on the wall of the exhibition space as an unframed wall aper. Because this wallpaper completely covered the wall of the exhibition space, the viewer got the sense that it became a portal to another space. This effect was the result of several interventions in the creation and presentation of this image. First, there was the huge scale of the image, enveloping the entire wall. This leads to a strange and ambiguous effect, in the sense that it is all encompassing and yet invisible. It is there, for all to see, but at the same time we don’t seem to notice it as an image, as something that is an object in its own right. This invisibility was, secondly, enhanced by the sheer weightlessness of its material substrate. Printed on thin paper and glued to the wall, the image became seemingly indistinguishable from the carrying wall, thus stressing again its invisibility as ‘an image’. All of this accumulated, thirdly, in emphasising the long-held belief in the transparency of the photographic image. The image on the wall does not longer function as a mirror of reality, of something that exists outside of its frame, but as a window through which one peers at the ‘real stuff’ without any mediation whatsoever. This idea that a photograph is a transparent window, something to look ‘through’ rather than to look ‘at’, defines the hold the medium of photography has on our imagination. We tend to believe that what we see is really there (or at least ‘over there’), until our desire to touch the object or person that is tantalisingly there before our eyes, jolts us awake: it was merely a phantasmagoria.

A similar and yet even more twisted take on photography as the art of spatial illusion, can be seen in another intervention of Kluiters’ in the same exhibition in Leeuwarden. In this work he again addresses the ambiguity of what one sees and what one experiences, while taking the general belief in the transparency of the photographic image to a whole other level. The image is again a blow-up of a fictional space created in the studio of the artist, but this time the image is not attached to a wall but glued to the glass entry doors of the exhibition space. This creates the eerie effect that, when the visitor walks up to the doors, he expects to find behind them the exact same space as the one he can see ‘on’ (or rather ‘through’) the glass door. Except, when he pushes the door open, he finds himself for a brief moment in two spaces at once: the imagined space conjured up by the image and the real space of the gallery interior he has just entered. In this case the effect of the work is again predicated upon our understanding of the photographic image as a truthful depiction of reality. But what makes this work different than the previous one is that the photographic ambush can only be exposed through a physical act by the visitor/viewer himself. It is only by pushing the door open that he becomes aware of the visual trickery he has unknowingly been exposed to. In the case of the wallpaper glued to the wall of the exhibition space, nobody ever touched it or collided with the wall, halfway expecting to pass through it.

Built upon the supposed transparency of the photographic image, these works first and foremost created spatial confusion in the exhibition space where they were presented. In other words: these interventions made use of the illusory character of photographic images, but as such did not address directly the spatial possibilities embedded in photography itself. In both instances the works were also site specific. They had no function, no reason to exist outside of the space they briefly occupied. Hence, as soon as the exhibition ended, they became obsolete, a leftover of an ephemeral oeuvre that created its own invisibility.

The Illusion of Drama

In his more recent work, Kluiters started to examine in more detail how space (or spatiality) in photography works and how it can become a tool for narration. The working method is quite similar as the one used in the previous works, but with some telling differences. He still starts by constructing wooden sculptural objects which he then photographs up close in his studio. But instead of making these constructed spaces to look as truthful as possible, he now accentuates their unfinishedness. Their ‘incompleteness’ is the result of several interventions. They are at least open on one side, allowing the light to enter from different angles, and their interior walls are often roughly smeared with paint. This makes them quite different than the previous models which aimed at recreating an interior space that could be experienced as authentic, as something that could really exist (even if that space looked somewhat generic). Here, the walls are crooked, stand askew, are sometimes perforated. Instead of the smooth surface of the hyper designed walls in the previous works, these walls are creaked, roughly textured. They seem to address foremost the hands instead of the eyes: they beg to be touched, to be stroked, to be felt. These spaces look like unfinished buildings or abandoned ruins, still under construction or already in decline. This introduction of a temporal sense – of something that is pointing towards a future completion or to a lingering memory of something that has irrevocably passed – adds to the inherent instability of these works. Are we looking at places that depict a possible dystopian future or the remnants of a utopian past?

 What we can say for sure is that they seem to depict impossible, or sometimes even deranged, spaces, seemingly built by an architectural mind who has lost all bearings. They might look convincingly real, yet they are impractical and sometimes clearly unliveable. As such, they remind us of the crooked stage sets used in the German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. This reference to cinema should not come as a surprise. It is as much a result of the warped spaces the pictures represent, as it is of the way in which Kluiters uses light in the creation of these images. The oblique light streaks along the walls, stressing their coarseness. It does not bounce playfully through the space, but collides harshly with the walls, creating a patchwork of light and dark spots. It is not a uniform light that gives an even emphasis to everything that is visible in the image (it is not a documentary, descriptive light), but an irregular light that construes a space within the constructed objects (the light is a performative agent that carves out a new space within the architectural setting of the sculptural model). The walls themselves are (ir)regularly interrupted by dark, rectangular spots leading towards a nondescript space behind (or below, or above, or on the side of) the enclosed space. Each opening is nothing more than a dark hole, equally filled with desire (the desire to escape) and horror (the void as an emblem of potential dangers lurking in the dark). This cinematic light is used to create suspense, to suggest a lingering drama. Something is afoot in these spaces. As such, these constructions become the reflection of a troubled mind, another element that links them with the tradition of the German Expressionist cinema.

 The images collected in this book are no longer interested in simply presenting the illusion of new, unseen, unfathomable spaces, of photographs as portals. They are no longer built on visual tricks to produce a sense of spatial ambiguity. Instead, they use the language of architecture to say something about the inner state of their creator. This more emotional approach is also a result of a newfound freedom in creating the sculptural scale models. Working in a more intuitive way, Kluiters is no longer a dominating, rational force that works according to a previously scripted plan. He listens to the material, he works with or against it, but always in close contact. The construction is based on a dialogue in which the intention of the artist constantly clashes with the opposing force of the materials he works with (wood, paint, light). All this leads to a richer and more layered image that allows for a deeper, and more personal contact with the viewer. This desire to stir up an emotional response by the viewer also explains the smaller size of these images. They are no longer meant to overwhelm the viewer as was the case in the large, wall-filling prints. Instead of forcing the viewer in, these small-scale images are facing outwards. They actively project something towards the viewer and as such become a device to stimulate a conversation by whispering a story to the viewer. The stories they tell are all built upon a similar feeling but address it in a slightly different manner. The dramatising light suffuses these hollowed out spaces with a sense of dread. Although each image has at least one opening in one of the walls, they still radiate a feeling of confinement. The openings are mere voids, they are no longer portals into another space. Or rather, if we could still consider them portals, they would function somehow as the mysterious black box in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Once one peers inside the box and exits through its dark emptiness, everything might still feel the same while nothing is recognisable. These voids will suck you in, but you will not exit them unharmed.

Critique on monotony / Review / Machteld Leij / NRC Handelsblad / 22-04-05 / English translation

Straight, with corners, and totally white. This is how the exhibition space of Ellen de Bruijne Projects normally looks when nothing is installed. This time, the space is also empty and white. However, something is wrong. And then you realise: the number of pillars is disproportionatly large. Where there was first only one, there are now nine. Unnoticeably white, but insistent on dividing up the space with their presence, they have been placed there by Michiel Kluiters for his exhibition ‘Mesh’.

The perception of space has played an important role in earlier works of Kluiters.

His large scale photographs of architectural models led you to believe that you could walk into a corridor or empty room. The artist played with physical and virtual architecture and to maintain the illusion of actual space there are no people present in the photographs.

In his video work for Mesh, there is also the absence of people. A monitor hangs outside of the gallery space in front of a window in a D-I-Y plywood box. In a video-loop, we see Dutch urban development at a slow pace. Filming the images of emerging architectural formations from the inside of a car reflect the improvised structure outside of the car window. Every street looks the same except for the range of parked, middle-class cars, different in front of each door.

The Rozengracht, a busy street in the centre of Amsterdam literally becomes the frame for the video, with the traffic moving in the opposite direction to the film. It seems that Kluiters wants to show that the inner city is alive, whilst the urban living areas are asleep.

The work has comparisons with the Belgium artist, Jan De Cock, who often takes over space and rearranges it with his temporary architectural structures. But Kluiters work is more subtle. His pillars appear completely natural. If you didn't know the gallery space it would not necessarily occur to you that they were not always there.

The artist is not only interested in formal aspects such as space and volume. By repeating the pillars throughout the gallery he says something about the monotony of our surroundings. If every building block is similar to the next, just as in the development sites, then there is no space left for the individual.

De grens van vergeten / Cultureel Supplement / Maria Barnas / NRC Handelsblad / 11-06-2010 / Dutch

‘Hier is de grens’, zegt een jongetje van een jaar of zeven. Hij zit op zijn hurken in een deuropening en wijst aan waar twee kleuren laminaat elkaar raken. Hier gaat de vloer van de galerie over in die van wat hij ‘het privégedeelte’ noemt. Niet een deur, maar de ontmoeting van twee tinten vormt hier de grens. Alhoewel ik nu niets liever zou willen dan het mij verboden gebied van galerie Ellen de Bruijne Projects binnenstappen, ga ik de tentoonstellingsruimte in die wordt gedomineerd door een zwevende spiegelbol. Ik zie niets anders dan spiegelende oppervlaktes. Wanneer ik naar mijn gezicht op zoek ga, zie ik alleen mijn voeten bewegen. Ik kijk veel in spiegels. Ik kijk ’s ochtends in de spiegel om te kijken hoe ik mijn haar in een staart moet binden. Ik kijk of ik de crème op mijn gezicht goed heb uitgesmeerd. Veel vaker kijk ik in de spiegel om mijn eigen aanwezigheid te controleren. Ik kijk zeven, acht keer per dag of ik er nog ben. Een vluchtige blik volstaat. Ik knik mezelf toe: dag ik, dag jij.

We zijn er nog. Particle van Michiel Kluiters maakt me onrustig. Waar ben ik? vraag ik me af terwijl ik om de bol heen loop. De galerieruimte is er versnipperd en verknipt in terug te vinden. Ik zie nu dat het midden van de bol zich op ooghoogte bevindt. De spiegelvlakken onder en boven de middenlijn staan in een lichte hoek ten opzichte van degene die de ruimte betreedt. Daarom zie ik wel mijn voeten, de vloer van de galerie, en ook het plafond, maar niet mijn hoofd. Elke spiegel staat in een net iets andere hoek, waardoor de ruimte - als in een sequentie van Dibbets - verspringt. Ik probeer me te concentreren op de naad tussen twee spiegels. Deze vormt een messcherpe lijn tussen twee blikken op een ruimte die zich niet laten verenigen: in de ene spiegel staat mijn linkerschoen hoog in het vlak, in de aangrenzende spiegel staan twee voeten midden in het beeld. In de eerste spiegel is een hoek van een drempel te zien, in de tweede alleen de grijze vloer. 'Dit is de grens', hoor ik het jongetje tegen een andere bezoeker zeggen. 'Niet vergeten!' zegt hij. Emma Crebolder schrijft in haar nieuwe dichtbundel Vergeten wat het is om woorden kwijt te raken, en daarmee het perspectief op jezelf en je

omgeving. Niet kardemom, meer genaamd paradijskorrel, niet rozemarijn niet salie niet komijn. Ze laat de woorden letterlijk zoekraken in haar gedichten die rondcirkelen om de verloren begrippen.

Ruis voor mij uit naam. Blijf in mijn buurt tot ik het busseltje ongekamd groen zie liggen. Ik wijs het je aan. Crebolder lezen is de paniek ervaren om een wegglippend woord. Het is ook een rijkdom zien in beelden en woorden die ervoor in de plaats komen. Zolang het woord kwijt is, doemen andere begrippen op. Ik loop rondjes om de bol van Kluiters waarop de ruimte in en om de spiegels zich in beweging lijken te zetten. In elke spiegel lijkt een andere film te beginnen. Ik schat dat de bol uit honderd spiegels bestaat. Honderd camera's gericht op hetzelfde moment, dezelfde ruimte. Ben ik regisseur, cameraman of acteur in deze films? Ik probeer een toeschouwer te zijn.

Michiel Kluiters / Melancholie op locatie / Dominique Ruyters / Metropolis M / 2002 / Dutch

Hoe leeg moet een ruimte zijn om 'doelbewust nutteloos' te zijn. Georges Perec probeert het zich voor  te stellen in zijn boek Espèces d' espaces (vertaald als De Ruimte Rondom). Het blijkt geen eenvoudige opgave. Een ruimte, hoe leeg ook, heeft al snel een functie. 'Hoe ik ook mijn best deed, het lukte me niet die gedachte, dat beeld [van de nutteloze ruimte, DR], tot het eind toe vast te houden. Het leek wel of de taal zelf tekortschoot bij het beschrijven van dat niets, die leegte, alsof je alleen kunt spreken over wat vol, nuttig en functioneel is.' Michiel Kluiters heeft zich, Perec indachtig, ten doel gesteld de nutteloze ruimte te traceren, om vervolgens direct vast te stellen hoe onmogelijk de definitie van leegte is. Want vol zijn ze, de ruimtes die Kluiters in fotografie en video vastlegt, hoe leeg ze ook lijken. De kale gangen, dode hoeken en vage doorkijkjes barsten van volte. In de tentoonstelling bij Ellen de Bruijne Projects toonde Kluiters twee van die lege ruimtes: een wand vullende videoprojectie van een lege gang waarvan de tl-verlichting op een storende manier knippert en daarmee de ruimte als het ware aan en uitzet, en een grote foto, aangebracht op de achterwand van een ruimte die door een glasplaat was afgesloten. De foto leek een verdubbeling van de afgesloten ruimte, en vormde zo een suggestieve verlenging ervan. Het was de perfecte ruimtelijke illusie achter glas, als in een ingelijst plaatje.

Kluiters suggereert zich suf. Handig maakt hij gebruik van de truc van de abstracte kunstenaar die minder meer laat zijn door informatie te reduceren. Bij hem spreekt niet de enkele lijn op het lege doek, maar de stemmig gekleurde ruimte die onder normale omstandigheden alleen de achtergrond vormt van huiselijke taferelen met mensen en spullen. De bewoners zijn vertrokken, de filmcrew is weg, en toch lopen de ruimtes over van betekenis. Te herkennen zijn een oude lege kantoorruimte en een gang uit een Amerikaans woonblok, die - zag ik het goed? - net nog vol stond met spullen. Bij de definitie van ruimte blijkt kleur een belangrijker informatiedrager dan mens of ding. Toch wordt er per saldo geen verhaal verteld. De lege ruimtes zijn, hoe je het wendt of keert, toch echt lege ruimtes - een lege dop, eerder dan het halve ei. Veel hebben ze niet te zeggen. Het blijft bij sferische illusie in de traditie van het abstract realisme van Saenredam. Stemmingsbeelden zijn het, met de leegte als leidmotief. Noem het: melancholie op locatie. Met niets kom je nergens behalve in de kunst. Veel kunst gaat er prat op helemaal niets te zijn, maar des te meer te betekenen hebben. Pure pretentie, daar gaat het om in deze wereld van demake believe. Overeenkomstig Kluiters' behoefte aan leegte, aan het niets draait hij er geen doekjes om. Als de ruimte niet niets kan zijn en, overeenkomstig Perecs theorie, alleen volte betekent, dan heb je alleen de kunst zelf nog om niets te zijn. En dus laat Kluiters de toeschouwer op ontluisterende wijze zien hoe illusionair het werk is. De ruimtes blijken maquettes, die al dan niet bewerkt op de computer, de nagenoeg perfecte illusie van een werkelijk lege ruimte moeten bieden. Nagenoeg is niet perfect en dus luidt de conclusie: het werk is onecht, illusie, decor, lege huls. Van illusie

kun je niet eten, daar heb je niets aan, behalve in de kunst. Het zijn typische jaren tachtig onderwerpen waar Kluiters mee bezig is: plaats, niet-plaats, decor, illusie, leegte. In die jaren werd op de meest omslachtige manier denkbaar een schijnwereld gecreëerd die niets anders wilde aangeven dan de eigen lege kern. Het heette destijds een louterend commentaar op het betekenissen circus van de mediamaatschappij te zijn, waar alles altijd iets betekent. Kan iets ook eens niets te betekenen hebben? De conclusie is negatief. Perec weet er alles van.