09-07-2016

Dutch Design Daily

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Ruth van Beek www.ruthvanbeek.com

Ruth van Beek

By 09-07-2016

Ruth van Beek studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and graduated in 2002. She published two books at RVB BOOKS in Paris: The Hibernators (2011) and The Arrangement (2013).

Ruth van Beek arranges images from her growing archive of found photographic material in constantly changing ways. She creates her work out of these odd combinations and decontextualized images, treating the photos she collects as objects. By cutting and folding, adding shapes of watercolor-painted paper and connecting similar elements in different pictures, she creates form, scale and colour interplay.

Displayed as archeological objects – puzzling valuables from an unknown time – they form a collection in which not only the story within one image is important, but in which the interaction between the different works and their physical appearance tell a story of their own.

The work becomes mysterious, non-chronological, and as a whole is never finished. An encyclopedic series showing a hidden world within existing photography. A world of dreams and nightmares, weirdness, futilities and beautiful coincidences.

All images courtesy of The Ravestijn Gallery.