Lot 136
Bas Meeuws (Dutch, b. 1974). "Mughal Botanical (#8)" digital c-type print on dibond behind acrylic, 2015. A beautiful C-type print by Dutch artist Bas Meeuws featuring a hyper-realistic image of four apricot-hued dahlias in full bloom beside three dahlia buds and a series of insects, such as a butterfly, a bee, and ants. All atop a stark black background, Meeuws skilled use of light, obsession with detail, and playful manipulation of perspective and scale create a compelling composition. Inspired by the floral still lifes of the Dutch Golden age, Meeuws artistic process involves photographing each flower separately from different angles, in artificial light, in different stages of flowering, in front of a black background. He then makes a composition, choosing flowers from his database of over 13,000 images, and airbrushes the flowers together, later adding light and shadow manually. Size of print: 19.1" W x 27.25" H (48.5 cm x 69.2 cm); of frame: 23.4" W x 31.6" H (59.4 cm x 80.3 cm)
Meeuws will often play with realistic ratios and lifecycles of flowers, stating: "A flower has a short life span; I catch that moment out of time. I photograph them the moment they hit me, and that includes transience. Finished flowers also represent the circle of life: the flower forms buds, with seeds and berries. You can see that as the end of the flowering cycle, but it is also the beginning of a new one. Without those seeds, there will be no new flower."
About the artist: "To really see Bas Meeuws' flowers, you have to take your time. If you are too hasty, you will just see a vase of flowers, but if you look more closely, you will see that each and every flower has an incredible beauty. There is the reflection of the light from a leaf, the elegant arch of a stem. Your gaze explores petals, insects and leaf veins, roams the landscape behind the flowers and lingers on the vase, with its distinct shape and decoration. You now start to notice that there is a friction: the proportions between the flowers are strange, the play of light and shadow has something enigmatic.
Looking properly is for the eye what tasting a refined dish is for the tongue. Bas Meeuws' work seduces you into employing the power of sight for pure sensory pleasure.
Our gaze follows that of the artist. Meeuws has a sharp eye for the richness of the shapes, colours and textures of flowers, insects and birds. He observes them intensely, whether they are in his own back garden, a municipal park, the Muiderslot gardens, the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden or the magnificent national parks of Taiwan. Camera, software and printing techniques are extensions of his unparalleled human eye. He uses technology to give us, the spectators, what he has seen. 'See how beautiful it is' is what his flower still lifes are silently saying. A feast for the eye." -Anneke van Wolfswinkel, writer and art critic (from the artist's website).
Provenance: private New York, New York, USA collection
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#189824
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Condition:
- Set in custom frame with suspension hooks on verso for display. Print and frame are in excellent overall condition.
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