In 2003, the artcritic defined Jhim Lamoree in Dutch newspaper Het Parool
the painting of Berlin Karl-Marx the Allee van Tjebbe Beekman as an urban
inferno. In his view a youthful and contemporary life feeling, radiated the
work among the other participants to the royal price for painted art.
Beekman did not win the price, in spite of the fact that a jury member had
made him strong for that.
That´s how it works in the Netherlands, commission - and jury country:
one chooses for consensus, strange fruit will never be taken into consideration.
Lamoree had typified the work of Beekman in one sense striking.
Beekman does not paint just simpely town landscapes; it is as if each moment
they burst. From their joints, so many dynamics and movement can he manages
to suggest. The city is for Beekman as a moving organism that grows and shrinks
with nieuwbouwprojecten and deforestation at the same time. He exposes with
his manner of painting the continuous dynamics of a metropolis.
Beekman paints spectacularly, but reflects also meaningful details. Ranges
of buildings strewn with satellite dishes betray for example the hunger of
the occupants to not European media for their news broadcast.
Each painting strove seems a signature, that´s how fluently and accurate
they have been put.
But the work of Beekman produces also a chaotic sight. This has to do with
the use of (digital) photography of town pictures and buildings, which he
treats on the computer.
His buildings seem to yield sometimes or collapse. With his manner of painting
Beekman exposes the ongoing dynamics of the metropole.
Neither a bird flight perspective with which he gives a look up the roofs
of the city or if he chooses for a panorama view along the town edge, Beekman
puts the correct proportions on the canvas with an seemingly obvious gesture.
Particular is that Beekman makes much of his work lying down on the ground.
Because of this he can use several materials and sorts of paint without running
in each other.
Macha Roesink
From his studio in Friedrichshain, former East Berlin, Tjebbe Beekman expresses
his pessimistic vision on modern life. With his grant, monumental paintings,
he shows the dynamics of a city. That he does so in Berlin is hardly a coincidence.
No other city unites so much roaring past with all thinkable aspects of a
contemporary metropolis. After his residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam,
he therefore chose to live and work in Berlin. The architecture, the past
and the present of the city are a source of inspiration for his, often huge
paintings, consisting of canvas on wooden frames. They depict grey concrete
flats in suburbs, satellite antenna's on the balconies. In his latest works,
Beekman shows us interiors for the first time: supermarkets and shopping malls:
big representatives of our current consumer society.
Beekman's paintings embody the radical processes that characterise our society:
migration, globalisation. These processes are irreversible and happen very
fast. They changed the sight of our western cities immensely: skyscrapers
and mosques appeared in great numbers, in streets you hear all sorts of music
styles and smell at least as many different cuisines. Add to this modern technologies
and growing individualism and you will understand the confusing state of mind
of the individual. We're all in constant contact with the entire world, through
Internet and satellite television, but we don't know our next-door neighbour.
And even though we never actually see a human being in Beekman's paintings,
we can feel how he has lost his grip on the world that surrounds him.
Tjebbe Beekman finished his study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague in 1997. He uses different materials to paint: acrylic, sand, enamel. To make sure these materials don't run, his canvases or panels lay on the ground as he paints them. His works are the results of several digital photos of the same building, street or interior. The images that come about look fragmented and chaotic but they're composed with mathematical precision. In small, grey acrylic sketches Beekman responds to the world news: Guantanamo Bay, the Oval Office. At this moment Beekman also participates in the exhibition Nederland-Duitsland at the GEM Museum, The Hague.
(Manon Braat)