3who needs art?

This booklet gives an impression of the art collection of artists represented by Amstel Gallery, The Netherlands. More art and information: www.amstelgallery.com.

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6 Casper Faassen

12 Carole Feuerman

18 George Heidweiller

20 Daniel Maltzman

22 Andy Moses

24 Govert de Roos

28 Koen Vanmechelen

30 Klaus Verscheure

34 Jean Wells

ARTISTS

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6 Danza Silenciosa II Photography, 80 x 135 cm, 2009 | 8 Danza Silenciosa IV Photography, 80 x 135 cm, 2009 9top Briséïs mixed media op cor-ten steel, 250 x 120 cm, 2009 | 9bottom Astrée mixed media on cor-ten steel, 120 x 120 cm, 2009

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Casper Faassen grew up in Leiden (The Netherlands) where he developed his love for drawing and painting, inspired by the paintings of Rembrandt, another Leiden local.

Undecided on the best route to follow his passion and exploit his talent, Faassen chose Business School over Art School, beginning in San Diego and returning to Amsterdam to complete his Masters degree. Next to his studies, he developed his painting skills in his own time in his studio in Amsterdam.

In 2002 Faassen decided to focus solely on painting in which beauty remains the central theme in his work.The female form and – more recently – flowers remain the key subjects of his paintings, distinguished by the use of subdeud images outlined in red or white and composed against contrasting backgrounds.Besides painting, Faassen works with photography and lithography.

In 2007 Faassen received the ‘Talent of the Year’ award.

In 2008 Faassen launched his first book, celebrating the first years of his work.

Casper Faassen

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12 Balance Oil and Resin, 2008, 36” x 32” x 18” | 14 Hands on Towel Oil and Resin, 1996-2008 ,15” x 16” x 7” 15 Splash Oil and Resin, 2008, 15” x 12” x 5” | 16 The General’s Daughter Oil & Resin, 2008, 26” x 18” x 9 “ 17 Madonna, Bronze, 1992, 31” x 16” x 5”

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Carole Feuerman is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most prominent hyper- realist sculptors. She has enjoyed three museum retrospectives to date, and has been included in prestigious exhibitions at, among other venues, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy.

Among the notable honors Feuerman has received are the Amelia Peabody Sculpture Award, the Betty Parsons Award in sculpture, the Lorenzo de Medici Prize at the 2001 Biennale di Firenze, and First Prize at the 2008 Beijing Biennale.

Her work is in the collections of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, the Absolut Art Collection, and Forbes Magazine, among others.

Public collections include The Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, The Bass Museum in Miami Beach, The Tampa Museum, The Boca Raton Museum, The Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, The Miami Children’s Museum, Queensborough Community College Art Museum, Brandeis University, and Grounds for Sculpture.

Carole Feuerman: “I like the idea that my work inspires the viewer to look closely at what stands before them. I want the viewer to complete the story.”

Carole A. Feuerman

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18 Modern cityscape mixed media on canvas, 2007-2009, 100 x 160 cm or 100 x 200 cm

19George Heidweiller

In the exotic proliferation, which has given art of the late 20th and the early 21st century such exhilarating impulses, George Heidweiller’s screen-prints, collages and mixed media paintings form a virtually evident image of today’s world.The ecology of a world citizen: Born in Beverwijk (1963), of Surinam parents, at the gnarled edges of the ever burning and smoke spitting towers of the ‘Hoogovens’, a solid art education (painting and graphic art) at the Royal Academy of The Hague,followed by the wild years in the studio of rock and roll-junkie and painter Herman Brood and after numerous faraway, adventurous and inspiring travels (India, Asia, Mexico, United States), settles down in New Mexico, never stopping to take flight to distant locations.

Heidweiller draws from a borderless inspiration of vistas, shocking contrasts, moving snap-shots made of the urban landscape in a flash. Clues, fragments of east and west, north and south, derived from cultures of whites, blacks, yellows, glide in layers, chaotic but determined, into each other’s worlds.This is the ever-recurring theme of his works. The Global Village of Marshall McLuhan turns into Heidweiller’s own global township, which starts to show more and more similarity, a uniformity brilliantly manipulated by this artist, however, to a great range of endlessly combinable variations.

One can draw interesting parallels to other Dutch artists who left their country to find inspiration in faraway places or who were fascinated by the complexity of urban views. Classic Dutch impressionists like Breitner, Israels and Arntzenius were still part of the 19th century romantic period. Still, even they were already touched by the bustle and colourfulness of metropolitan street images. Their work, however, fit the tradition at the time where the picturesque theme was most important.

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22 Woman Blue Face acrylics on canvas, 48” x 60”

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Daniel Maltzman is a Los Angeles based artist with a strong global presence. his work is included in numerous private collections including Lee Lacocca, Steve Tisch, Eugenio Lopez (The Jumex Collection) and Steve Wynn. He exhibits all over the world from LACMA to Art Basel and is represented by galleries worldwide. Maltzman, a painter for over 15 years continues to procure his recognizable head turning style through current work featuring his signature ‘Woman’ and ‘Faces’. Constantly catching the eye of top Hollywood producers, his work is often featured throughout the entertainment industry, including televisio shows such as Dirty Sexy Money, Brothers and Sisters, Entourage and Nip Tuck. His work has been published in the Robb Report, Art Investor Magazine, Space Magazine, Interiour Design Magazine and W Magazine. Recently Maltzman has created paintings for Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Eva Longoria, Velvet Revolver, Mr Chow, The Oscars, The Emmy’s, The Dog Whispereer, Millionaire Matchmaker, MTV, The Hard Rock Hotel, Wynn Hotel, Yankee Stadium and STK. Museum exhibits: LACMA- Los Angeles, CASanta Monica Museum of Art- Santa Monica CAHunstsville Museum of Art- Huntsville, AL

Daniel Maltzman

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30top Desert Longitude acrylics on canvas, 36 x 76” | 30bottom Longitude 18” x 24” acrylics on canvas

Southern California painter Andy Moses forges a bond with master artists of the past. Known for his hefty atmospheric concave and convex paintings, Moses brings the essence of Jackson Pollock, Joseph M. W. Turner and Mark Rothko’s art into his 21stcentury creations.

Moses, who was brought up near the Santa Monica beach,would later find his psyche imprinted with surfing and the ocean.After studying at Cal Arts and moving to New York, the ocean, sky and light of California beckoned and became the major inspiration for his art. Returning to the beach community, his personal quest took shape: to explore paint and study how the liquid substance can convey, in visceral expression, the majestic essence of natural forces.

Moses’s paintings are meditative; one gets lost in their quiet huge ness that is at once expansive and reductive. The experience is like being high above the world, like an astronaut freely roaming the heavens. Or being adrift in an endless ocean. Or getting lost in an immense field of color.

Moses’s art may integrate theories of the masters, but with great skill and ingenuity, he arrives at an innovative vocabulary for the present – one that is eloquent in describing land, sky and sea.

Andy Moses

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26 Jackson 5, 1979 | 28 ABBA, 1975 | 29 Grace Jones, 1980 | Back Cover David Bowie, 1978

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At a young age, Govert de Roos (Amsterdam, 1953) developed his passion for photography. It all began with his love for pop music and the challenge to get to the front row during live concerts of various music artists to shoot some great photographs. Now and then he made a sharp image. At home he enjoys the magic in the dark room. At the age of fifteen he managed to sneak into the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam with a fake ID badge to take photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their bed in for peace.In 1969 he met Nico van der Stam, a portrait photographer. He taught Govert the real profession of photography. As Nico van der Stam’s assistant, he had the opportunity to arrange his own sessions with famous Dutch people, international and national pop stars. In his first year he managed to make two LP covers.In 1972 Govert made a switch to pop photographer Claude Vanheye. He was even closer to the music world. Govert is an admirer of his work, and now had the opportunity to develop his own photography. Authorized by Claude Vanheye, Goverts work appeared in a lot of music magazines.After three years it started to show that he was ready to begin as a professional photographer under his own name. In July 1975 Govert started his own little studio in a delightful area in a garage in the centre of Amsterdam. He stayed there for over 30 years. These days, his work is historical.

Govert works for all kinds of magazines, and is very active in the world of music, theater and film at the moment. He develops his ability to portrait people and he understands the art of everybody’s beautiful side in his own way of lighting. Always different, but at the same time recognizable as a de Roos. Because of this, his name relies on entertainment photography.Today, Govert’s free work plays a bigger part than it used to do, which shows in the many exhibitions. He enjoys the freedom, his own ideas and experience to combine them all for that one look full of passion.

Govert de Roos

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Koen Vanmechelen is one of today’s artists that no longer chooses for just one medium to work in, but instead has developed a unique mix of different media. His works range from highly expressive paintings and drawings, to photography, video, installations, works in glass and a recurring wooden sculpture. What connects all these different ways of expressing himself is the chicken and the egg. Over the years they have become an important symbol that has enabled the artist to make a connection to scientific, political, philosophical and ethical issues. The intricate system that he thus developed is the subject of the debates, conversations and lectures the artist organizes or takes part in to shape his philosophical universe.

Before he started his all-embracing project, he made wooden constructions, assemblages, and cages for poultry, staying close to the tradition of the Belgian assemblage artists.Nowadays his work can be divided in three main categories: Golem, the principle of the creating man, is the point of departure for the whole of his work and is still an important pillar. The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP) is the core in which Vanmechelen works around an extensive breeding programme with chicken breeds from all over the world. By doing so he asks attention for crossing borders in all means of the word and above all a mutual understanding. Medusa is the so called scientific part that used to be called The Walking Egg and can be seen as the think tank behind the CCP.

Koen Vanmechelen: ‘Cross-breeding is the one thing. We need to cross breed across the boundaries if we want the world not to perish. We need to think cosmopolitical. Nothing is as beautiful as joining with other cultures and take energy from this.’

Koen Vanmechelen 29

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30 Smiling Faces#1, Abeer I love you, gouache on paper, 2009, 150x185cm | 32left Holiday Greetings, lambdaprint between plexi, edition 1/1, 2009, 90x130cm | 32right Holiday Greetings lambdaprint between plexi, edition 1/1, 2009, 90x130cm | 33 Face#26, gouache on paper, 2009, 70x90cm,

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Klaus Verscheure (1968) is a Belgian director. He decided in 1986 to attend RITS (Brussels) to train as an animated filmmaker. He finished in June 1989 on l’Entrée de l’hiérophante, a film on music by Blaine L. Reininger (violinist and founding father of Tuxedomoon).

Klaus works as a freelance director. Most of the time he directs fiction series, he made a lot of commercials and music videos and several films for museums.

During the built up of this career, klaus kept on working on the job which he considers the most important labour of all. He never ceased painting and drawing. Both mingled up with film and video and melted into installations, ART remained the heartbeat of klaus’ way of living. CJK (Centrum Jonge Kunst) in Ghent promoted his work and send it to exhibitions in Holland, Great Britain and Greece, after it was shown in their gallery in Ghent.Besides his career as a freelance director his studio was the world where the fire kept burning. Most of the time his artwork remained inside, but at the end of 2009, klaus decided that time had come to open up the doors of the studio and to step out to show his work.

Klaus Verscheure

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34 Fish Bowl 2 feet tall x 2 feet diameter | 35 Bubblegum 2.5 feet tall x 1.5 feet diameter36left 7-Up 2 feet tall x 0.5 foot diameter | 36right Ice Cream Sundae 5.5 feet tall x 3.5 feet diameter37 Coffee, Tea, or Me 1 foot tall x 1.5 feet diameter

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Giant chocolate kisses, a seven foot ice cream sundae, even a mosaic toilet bowl filled with goldfish—are all fair game for Jean Wells playful—yet powerful—sculpture. In her work, Wells draws from a rich family background in the arts, combining innate abilities with a penchant for popular culture to create colorful, large-scale mosaic sculptures. Her themes are simultaneously familiar and fantastical, ranging from everyday objects to childhood treasures.

Wells graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in Fine Art. She later attended The Art Institute of Seattle (formerly Burnley School for Professional Art), and says she has always benefited from the endless hours of instruction and mentoring she received from family members. Her extensive creative background led Wells toward a career path in the art world. Wells continued to create ceramics and paintings over the next several years.

Taking her viewers to another dimension, the cultural iconoclastic images Wells works with resonate with collectors, gallery directors and mass audiences alike. The effectiveness of her art is not just a consequence of her skill with design and color but also a result of her ability to make the ordinary extraordinary while capturing an aura of nostalgia and excitement. Wells’ art is eccentric and at the same time relevant. She has taken the mundane and given our generation an opportunity to view consumerism through her expressive, one-of-a-kind pieces.

Jean Wells

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‘ art is passion, falling in love and confusing at times’

Petra Leene

Graphic design Ellen Smit, www.lln-go.nl

At Amstel Gallery we believe

that everybody needs art. Art is

passion, art is falling in love and

art is confusing at times.

We strongly believe in the artists

that we represent and want to

share our passion for art with the

rest of the world.

www.amstelgallery.cominfo@amstelgallery.com