Theo Berends
Photography / Netherlands / www.theo-berends-fotografie.nl
I show that the secret exists...
Respect and emotion: the two words that describe my manner of working. A subject deepens itself if it is approached respectfully. One can look at a stone and just see a stone, but one could also realise that this stone is thousands of years old and has had incredible experiences. If this is your way of approaching a subject, you will receive something in return as a photographer. The image produced will become richer and more beautiful. Many objects reveal their secret only after four or five times, and even then it's impossible for me to tell the secret of that landscape, that town, or that woman. However, it is possible for me to make a picture that shows that the secret is there. I'm not sure whether secret is the right term, but what else can you call it? Mysticism? Alliance? I photograph on the basis of emotion. The ideas for many of my photographs arise on the spot or during a session. More often than not, a shot entails only the beginning of a process. I linger about what I felt during the shooting, about why, about the backgrounds or the history of the subject. The new information and the new feeling connected with this is added to the photograph at a later moment. For this goal, I make use of modern computer techniques, but I also sometimes scratch the negatives, pile up negatives, or I cut them to create new elements. I keep working on a photograph until my feeling tells me this is perfect now. For me, photography entails a voyage of discovery. When I look through the viewfinder, I can put the world in a framework and make it according to my feelings. That is the world I photograph. That is all there is to say.
Christian Culver
Painting / U.S.A / www.culverdesign.com
Christian Culver is a practicing Architect. His passion for architecture and his dedication to creating inspiring architectural environments have fundamentally led him to question the way in which we see, view and process the visual world around us. "My attempt is to engage the viewer on two levels, one on a large scale, and secondly on a small scale. The large scale investigates the relationships of colors, fields, and the viewers' sense of place. The small scale focuses upon very detailed fragmented, yet linked 'instances' or 'discoveries' that as a whole create a relationship. Through the process of transformation, Christian examines the actual concept of 'vision' - the ability to see, and perceive and his work reflects the intensity of visual information which we are now bombarded with everyday. In 2000, Christian won the Silver Prize in the International Design Competition, Nagoya Design, Do Nagoya, Japan. In 2004 Delta Airlines selected and commission his work for their Vinum Wine Brochure.
Hans Feyerabend
Painting / Germany / www.feyerabend.com
Ancient legends, medieval fairies, timeless beasts, and contemporary office clerks are some of the leading subjects in the works of painter Hans Feyerabend. Each painting captures the essence of a moment with kaleidoskopic facettes. The portrayals demand abandonment of "seeing as usual". They create their very own reality. A reality, in which formal relationships of colors and shapes are as important as the subjects. They combine in equilibrium to hold the paintings together and to give them their unique quality. The balance of conceptual forms and depicted subjects lends the paintings their inner tension, and giving rise to powerful compositions. The paintings start as an open process of overlaying abstract compositions. Through the techniques of addition and substraction, figurative scenes emerge. Through precise observance, creative instinct, and formal laws of visual composition, the work is further developed. The traces of the painting's origins are not hidden. Comparable to geological processes of layering and deterioration, the paintings evolve into their one-of-a-kind character.
Leon Kipping
Painting / Netherlands / http://www.arttango.nl/
Implicit in Leon Kippings vibrant digital work is a conversation between technology and nature, abstraction and figuration. His compositions combine iconographic imagery with a striking sense of color, texture and pattern to create works that are both highly specific and improvisational in their beauty and playfulness. Shimmering earth tones dance with bright, brilliant hues to create sharp, refracted geometries. Kipping first digitally paints his images on a computer, enabling him to work in the nascent realm of digital manipulation, which offers him variegated methods of compositional metamorphosis. He then transfers his images onto canvas using a combination of digital print and traditional painting media. His unique method results in arresting, textured compositions that live in the tenuous boundary between the emblematic and the abstract. Kipping is also the founder of ArtTango Art and Advertising Consulting Agency, a successful design firm in The Netherlands, specializing in the development of created corporate identities that are "developed into a creative total concept and implemented in the interior and exterior with digital paintings, photographic images, mosaic and/or stained glass objects" to strengthen a company's image and positioning. ArtTango also develops clearly executed and creatively themed concepts for the private market.
Theo 
Christian 
Hans 
Leon 
Yvonne 
Dagmar
