REGGIE VOIGTLÄNDER

Drawing Connections

collage/actual: 10x15 cm, oil chalk, coffee, paper

Series of drawings in which the connection between matter and the act of drawing is made concrete. The lines become visible through the movement of the hand that passes over the texture of a stony background with the drawing material (oil chalk). The dots that appear on the paper are interconnected by the action. Action and object are directly related to each other. By applying different drawing techniques, an image that appeals to the imagination is created. It is the mimicry of nature itself. On the paper are also prints of a cup of coffee that was drunk during the production process. This technique was eagerly applied by the German surrealist painter Max Ernst. The big difference with these drawings is that in these paintings it served to create a certain texture as a visual element in the scenes he created. In these drawings, however, it is about action and connection itself.

The idea came with the theme of 'connecting', which is also characteristic of the way in which 'a whole' is created, regarding the artsists oeuvre; from a great freedom in terms of medium and techniques and various different projects, each of which has an independent cohesion, but also as a sub-project for the ever expanding and increasingly converging whole. In this case, the work arose from reflections on the working title of the 'Drawing Connections' project of the Siena Art Institute (Italy), where a work from the series was exhibited in a group exhibition and is now part of the permanent collection.

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Roter Faden / Leitmotiv

12 panels, A4 format, photo print / perspex

Twelve positions of frayed red colored textile, dropped by hand.

Sand

Photo/video installation, 2010

‘Sand’ is an early installation developed from a series of photographs capturing objects placed in a Dutch sand landscape.

The installation consists of an empty canvas draped across the floor, functioning as a surface for the projected images. The projection shows sharply swept sand planes in which plastic objects leave temporary impressions. The combination of canvas, light and projection introduces subtle references to the visual logic of historical painting: the draped form of the cloth and the painterly structures within the sand. The aesthetic of the sand and the traces left by the objects point to transience and to the material residues of a consumption‑driven society, without illustrating this literally.

In Sand, the image does not arise through painting but through reality itself; the canvas operates only as a surface for light and situation. This opens space for another mode of image formation, a shift from painting toward an image shaped by position, context and presence, anticipating the direction of the later practice.

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Shift

Photographic work

Archival photograph revealing a precise, almost graphic surface formed by the shifting of different layers of sand and earth. It exposes landscape in its bare minimum, how it appears, reorganises itself and becomes perceptible through natural displacement.

This work shows something that is already happening, allowing the viewer to recognise that looking itself generates meaning. It makes clear that the image is not produced but becomes visible when attention is given to what is already there. It demonstrates that meaning arises through observation; that landscape is not a genre but a structure that appears; that looking is an act of ordering; and that the world draws itself, with the work simply showing the moment in which this becomes visible. It invites a way of looking that is more precise and attentive, without interpretative noise, not to assign meaning, but to see meaning emerge.

It exposes landscape in its bare minimum, inviting a way of looking in which meaning arises from what is already there.

Shift

Four‑colour screen print following the photographic work Shift, produced as a commissioned public project for the city of Helmond, organised and curated by Bert Loerakker (2012). Professionally printed by Grafisch Atelier Daglicht (Eindhoven).

This screen print translates the natural displacement of sand layers into a graphic structure. Because the work had to be produced as a four‑colour print, the RGB model (red, green, blue) was used as the basis for separating the image into distinct layers. Unlike painterly colour mixing, RGB functions as a system: the colours do not blend but define areas, allowing the shifting of the terrain to be read as a sequence of zones.

Each colour follows the movement of the original landscape: red transitions into green across the first and second steps; green extends into the second and touches the third; blue becomes dominant in the deepest level where the material visibly flows. Black marks the structural drawing of the elements. Together, these layers create three terrains within the abstraction, from earth, to growth, to water, a horizontal progression that reads almost like a flag. It reflects a way of working that starts from what appears: by ordering the material as it presents itself, a landscape emerges without being constructed or interpreted.

This translation makes the internal structure of the original image visible: how the landscape organises itself, how colour becomes a system, and how a natural phenomenon can be read as a constructed image.

Size: 102 × 72 cm
Edition: Limited edition