Dimensions 30 x 27 x 9 cm
Material Shoe, paint
Jan Jansen original 1990
Material Shoe, paint
Jan Jansen original 1990
Jeroen Krabbé belongs to the fourth generation of painters in his family. Both his great-grandfather and his father, Jasper Krabbé, were painters before him.
Krabbé's work often contains references to memories, places and events that display the small irregularities of life that are often left to be forgotten. He places a spotlight on these events because he feels they display an unexpected beauty. The memories are not portrayed as clear, concrete images but rather as nebulous, incomplete events illogically disrupted by other images. Krabbé tries to capture the volatile instead of naming it, fighting against time because most of the dreams and memories that come to him are gone before he has picked up his brush to secure them permanently on a surface.
Krabbé’s work is held in a number of important collections and institutions, among them De Nederlandsche Bank and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions and exhibited in countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Brazil, Italy and the USA.
‘Jan designs art to walk on. The most beautiful shoes are the ones I bought
in his store on the Rokin: they were laced boots made of very soft leather with a perfect sole. They looked like the ones Egon Schiele always wore; they gave off such a 1900s feeling. I wore those until there was nothing left to walk on.’
in his store on the Rokin: they were laced boots made of very soft leather with a perfect sole. They looked like the ones Egon Schiele always wore; they gave off such a 1900s feeling. I wore those until there was nothing left to walk on.’
Krabbé always uses found materials as a surface to paint on. These range from envelopes and sheets of cardboard to book pages and paper placemats. By adopting this working method, he destroys the original function and meaning of the surface and allows it to evolve and develop new relationships in his painting.
For ‘Jan Jansen Shoe Treasures’, Krabbé found surface in Jansen's shoes. The spaciousness of the shoe made it different to work with, but proved to be the same in principle as canvas or paper. Experimental lines that are commonly found on Jansen's shoes forced Krabbé to reflect on his painting strategy – he wished to follow the lines as he felt this would complement the end result.