about Airco Caravan
In the work, Airco explores the boundaries of the seen and the unseen, the told and the untold. Transforming seemingly innocent images into slighty disturbing pieces of art. The use of bright colors and friendly fabrics emphasises the innocent, almost trifling first impression. At the same time this deepens the darker side of it.
Throughout the work, Airco Caravan takes a direct and challenging approach to ideas about existence. The work calls into question our awareness and convictions about the boundaries that separate desire and fear, life and death, reason and faith, love and hate. Iconic tools of power, religion and media are used creating paintings whose beauty and intensity offer the viewer insight into art that transcends our familiar understanding of those domains.
Cuddly or cruel? Nice or nasty? Airco Caravan is always looking for the thin line. Exploring the edge between sweet and sadistic. Power and freedom. Religion and emancipation. Free choice and oppression. Peace and violence. Life and death. Juxtapose worlds of kindness and truth, and explore the friction between them. The images appear to be friendly faces and cheerful images in bright, vibrant colors. At a closer look, they are not so nice at all. They bite. At what point the fine balance tips over from a sweet swimming pool image on a summer day to an everything wiping out nuclear meltdown?
nu pop art
Airco's work is often called iconographic or nu pop art; simple, strong, colourful images invite the viewer to take a closer look. Sweet and harmless but subconsiously disturbing. The images confront the viewer with existential, hidden questions, and leave it up to you to find the answer, if any. You may only find harder questions and confusion, or, if you choose, the soothing reassurance that nothing is wrong.
look closer
Details of silkscreens are on the bottom of some of the pages. The fabrics are framed with foam rubber and have therefore a soft texture. Every silkscreen has a frame of ribbon and sometimes some extra items applied to emphasise the image and add more layers to the structure and power of the picture.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
2007 Review in ARTisSpectrum, New York (PDF 1,1 MB)
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interview with Airco Caravan
happy world and not happy worldwhat is your birthplace?
A tiny village in the countryside of The Netherlands. I left the village at young age and lived in the 3 largest cities of The Netherlands since then.what are your most profound memories of growing up?
* Always busy with colors, making up new colors. Colors still uninvented. All the houses where I lived were a ‘zero white zone’, like my art. White is fear for color.* I used to play my Chopin piano sheet music upside down, trying to discover hidden messages like 'PAUL IS DEAD'.
* Fascinated by death as long as I can remember. Little skulls of birds, mice and even the remains of my dead goldfish filled my room. Completed by a big human bone I once took from the local graveyard.
* As a kid I often pretended to be drowned. I laid still on the bottom of the swimming pool and floated up slowly when I needed some air. Mostly I wasn't discovered at all. Until that one time that an ambulance showed up.
* Biking to school every day through beautiful nature, lush meadows and majestic trees. Between all that peaceful green there was this huge slaughterhouse with the nauseating stench of silos bulging with slaughter waste. Sometimes I still hear the screaming of the pigs on their way to pork.
* Making tons of pictures of road pizza’s, animals run over by cars ever since.
what personal experiences affected you?
I started to draw nudes in my little room from age 5, trying to create pure and innocent fairytales. My parents ridiculed me for it. And they still did when I painted my nudes in Art School.how has your culture of origin influenced your artwork?
Culture and religion are like the foil around a DVD. Some people get rid of it. But most never do, because they can't or won't. Having shed my foil wrap, I look with wonder at them. Why do these people do the things they do? My artist name also has to do with this. I used to collect little caravans, because they are all the same; white and boring. Just like foil-wrapped people. Airco means air conditioning, the essential refreshing breeze.have there been any events in your life that have shaped your art?
* After almost losing my middle finger in a car accident, I walked around giving everyone the finger, a big bandaged one, for many weeks. I liked that.* Experimenting with drugs made me realize that there's even more adventure in my brain than I knew. I also discovered my real hair color is pink.
what was the hardest point in your artistic journey?
It's always hard. Endless doubt, wanting to stop the ideas and thoughts in my head. But it's impossible. It never, never stops.what was the most gratifying experience for you as an artist?
Rediscovering the silkscreen many years after graduating from the Academy of Arts.what do you believe makes your art stand out in the art world?
It's unique. It's different from other art. Especially because of the textures in the artworks that make it extra sweet, soft and innocent. The images are very colorful, yet disturbing. It's a reflection of the present-day life. Happy world and not happy world. People bind with the art because it's doing something personal, something mysterious, an umbilical cord like thing, touching something existential.what would you like your art to accomplish?
Be refreshing. Make people think. And make people smile. A little bit.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *