Bouke Verwijs / A Few Compositions (2011)

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Composition I (2011)

Composition II (2011)

Composition III (2011)

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I like getting lost in some forgotten outskirt of an unpopular town, and face the display of a local bakery, that stuff kills me.

You know, those carefully presented compositions of salt dough bread-shapes and plastic flowers, unchanged since the shop opened,

I like all that. Once, somewhere very east, I ran in on this tailor shop, the lady had made herself a display which was so genuine it nearly made me weep,

it was raining so nobody could tell anyway.

There’s something graceful in all that counterfeit stuff: it makes wealth a lot cheaper, like those guys wearing these glorious fake Rolexes nowadays, trying to impress.

About impressing, it’s not just those watches; it’s also a peacock, or towers, a suit, airport lounges, even those salt dough presentations

or the wax caveman in that prehistoric museum, and what not, they all boast about their own existence.

But something about this counterfeit stuff is so genuinely fake it’s nearly profound, like it’s all of a sudden becoming aware of itself and it’s own attempts to impress.

That’s terrific. It always makes me think of this line of good old Wallace Stevens (not sure why but it does):

"Things as they are - Are changed upon the blue guitar."

The other day I was drinking coffee with this ancient German and he kept on going on about this stuff called Ersatzkaffee: implying some substitute coffee of inferior quality,

he sworn he liked it better, that struck me, it made me like the word Ersatz. It’s a good word for counterfeits that are about to ascend into something else;

which is the stuff I tend to work with.

A Few Compositions (2011)

- Bouke Verwijs (Leiden, Holland 1983) is a visual artist who lives and works in Rotterdam

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Bouke Verwijs / The Prosper Series (2010 – 2011)

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Corrosive Humour (migrant) (2010-2011)

Rule, Freedom, Exodus (2010-2011)

Seismic Shift (2010-2011)

Infinite Extencion, and The Collision of Many Interpretations of An Inherited Past (2010-2011)

Hieronymus Bosch (2010-2011)

Between All (2010-2011)

Vocal (Repeated Silence) (2010-2011)

And Fragmentary Memory (2010-2011)

Incommensurable (2010-2011)

Even Communism (2010-2011)

Between Legacies (2010-2011)

(The Prosper Series as seen from the back)

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Perhaps it’s in a way more certain to work with counterfeits (ersatz), like there’s no doubt about doubt.

And emphasise the omnipresent of outwardness, you know, something might just happen from within.

Something light or heavy, possibly both.

(Once I got lost in an international airport and knocked my head against a strange marble shape,

when I got up I found that I damaged it, and it made me feel strong.)

The Prosper Series (2010 – 2011)

- Bouke Verwijs

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For more information contact: boukeverwijs@gmail.com / 'The Prosper Series' are photographed (with exception of the last image) by Thomas Vahé 2011