#ABSTRACT #ROFLOL

Artsy fartsy stuff Jun 19 2012

We have an awesome group show coming up this Friday at the legendary W139 art center in Amsterdam. The show’s called Gold , you can read all about it on the W139-site (we also made a poster for the show of which the printed version contains solid gold printed poo. For realzy.).
Anyway, we were asked for this show by the people of W139 and besides feeling honoured by their request we got excited by the concept for the show. Actually it was the lack of concept that triggered us. There was just a vague direction and a bunch of possible names of other artists. It was all we needed.
One of the works we’ll be showing is an installation that consists of big abstract paintings, probably somewhere between 12 and 18 pieces of 150cm X 200-250cm. Big fucking heavy abstracts. Now we hear you thinking; ABSTRACT PAINTINGS!? BY MIKTOR & MOLF!? Hence this little story, so you can maybe understand where this is coming from.
It started back in June 2010, when we were invited to join a series of conversations about Minimal Abstract Art and the state it was in at the time, with several artists, critics and other people. We were flabbergasted to be invited. We sat with people like Aldert Mantje, Paul Groot, Ronald Hooft and more seriously smart and educated art heavyweights that made us feel somewhat awkward and out of place. At least until the wine kicked in and they proved to be fun people as well (and the food was great too). Minimal abstract art wasn’t doing too great in the world and right after the first talking-over-dinner-session Sigmar Polke sadly died. We had just learned about how rare humour and abstract art were combined and Polke was certainly a funny cat who had successfully done so. (Yes, we are fans of humour. It’s funny and makes us laugh.)
This inspired us to do our first abstract work; Hope for minimal Abstract Art part 1-7. An online piece that got Paul Groot to call us ‘true abstract artists’. True story. It’s a humoristic piece as well, if we may say so ourselves (if we don’t who will?).
Some time passed by and this abstract art-thingy reared it’s weird shaped head every now and then. Somewhere on the verge of spring 2011 we found ourselves bare chested in our studio, screaming enthusiastically while throwing whatever we could get our dirty hands on to a huge piece of paper. Every type of paint that was to be found in our office was schmeared onto it; expensive oil paint, cheap poster paint, acrylics, spraycans, but also never drying stencil ink, coffee and the stuff you use for garden sheds and fences. Using our hands, our skateboards, knives, brooms and empty whisky bottles to get that paint on our canvas. Plastic objects, lots of duck tape, cigarettes and even mint leaves ended up on it. We drew tiny little details on it with pencils, fibre pens and crayons. We just went crazy with it (did we really just say that?). For over a year we’ve been working on this series of big abstract paintings now. Mostly enjoying the highly physical act of painting together. Talking about compositions, techniques and about how dumb it feels to work abstract sometimes. Not caring too much about the enormous history of abstract painting. Not trying to do something that has never been done before. Not putting big ideas or outrageous concepts behind it. Basically not trying to be real artists, just having a blast on unknown territory (to us) and trying to make something really good.
And now this stuff has made it to a proper art show! We’re pretty stoked about it, but also really curious to how people will react to it.
We hope to see you this friday at the W139! It’s a wild show with a bunch of great work of great artists. Good times!