HANDIEDAN BACK-TO-BACK CLAUDIA HEK
GO Gallery, La Galerie Provocatrice and Wasteland Present
HANDIEDAN BACK-TO-BACK CLAUDIA HEK
The opening is on Friday 20 April, from 7 – 11 pm.
This exhibition in the GO Gallery is the official opening of the Wasteland weekend in Amsterdam.
For this exhibition, the GO Gallery has 2 original works and 3 limited edition prints (2 only!) for sale.
You could use either the word “artist” or “designer” to describe Handiedan at work. These are collages, but many of the design elements are planned out digitally on her laptop first, before she begins tearing into the rare vintage papers and cards that she gets from local flea markets and old buildings. The pin-up ladies you see are appropriated from the work of Elvgren, a very popular pin-up artist from the late 1930′s to the early 70′s.
Part of what’s interesting about these works is that they are as much object as they are image. The images are available by themselves as prints, but the real work of art belongs in a frame that is carefully selected for its subject. Handiedan is a kind of curator for special objects from the past whether it’s the frame, old Chinese papers, postage stamps, cigar bands, rusty nails, playing cards, or deconstructed Spanish fans among other things. Her work stands alone beautifully as flat images, but the dimension of the materials on top of each other as well as the frames are something to be noted and appreciated along with the obviously strong aesthetic value of the images the collages create.
Intricate and meticulously crafted, Handiedan’s collages represent the gradual accumulation of layers—not only of materials like wood, metal and paper, but cultural references as well. Over a backdrop of baroque designs culled from international currencies and antique sheet music, the artist fuses classic pin-up girl body parts to create her own version of beauty. Sometimes these beauties might wield an extra arm or two, and everything that lies exposed beyond their garters and brassieres is heavily inked with hand-drawn tattoos.
Claudia Hek
Thick lines and lovely ladies, that’s what Dutch autodidact artist Claudia Hek, age 35, is all about. Inspired by Pop Art, oldschool tattoo imagery and 40 ’s & 50’s pin-ups Claudia Hek’s work reflects her view of beauty that sends a bright spark into the world. Using bright colors and primarily women’s figures in all manner of professions (pirate wench to gun-slinging bandit), Claudia had created a new vision of these timeless subjects by evoking the raw modern passion of a bygone era in her paintings. Not only is Claudia a talented painter, but she is a prolific poster designer for bands worldwide. She also creates logos and stickers, t-shirts designs for bands, clothing labels and burlesque starlettes all around the world and has her own line of T-shirts that she sells in various shops and through her website.
Claudia Hek paintings
Claudia Hek prints
