The Spring Kunstkamer in Delft

For two weekends each year Ramon Dykgraaf and his partner Marc Cals  turn their sixteenth century canal side house in the Oude Delft into a veritable curiosity cabinet to show the work of four or five artists. The shows are curated along with Joke Doedens and Simone Haak who run Terra, a ceramics gallery in the city.

The work shown always mixes various art forms including painting, sculpture, lots of ceramics and anything else that catches the organisers’ eye. The standard is always high but for me, in this Spring’s Kunstkamer, it was the work of Ossip and that of Paul Nassenstein that stood out.

Paul Nassenstein’s work has recently veered away from the colourful paintings in which large spaces are loosely scattered with tiny people, animals or objects, as if placed on a stage, all isolated as if unaware of each other. Although the current pencil drawings include all these same elements, the eye is less distracted and these works on paper form a more homogenous entity. I loved the large subtle drawings in black and white.

But for me Ossip’s work stole the show. Photographic images of decades long gone figures are cut-out of magazines or scrap books, pasted on to wood and turned into three-dimensional objects by means of wires.  Some figures appear to be floating whilst juggling trembling objects, others have undergone animalistic transformations, sporting almost pre-historic wire bristles along the spine and long threatening tails.  Ossip seems to exhibit almost exclusively in the Netherlands which may be why I had not come across his fascinating, other-worldly work. If he exhibits near you, don’t miss it.

The show also includes paintings by Erik Mattijssen along with ceramics by Johanpeter (Jp) Hol and Claire Verkoyen.

KunstKamer takes place in May and November and should definitely be noted in your arts calendar.

Astrid Burchardt   28th May 2022