Painter Robert Zandvliet is one of the world’s best of his generation. At the age of 45, as a mid-career artist, he has reached a point for reflection. He has held up art history to the light and is trying to redefine himself. His depictions are becoming increasingly bare, so that only archetypical forms remain. As he says himself, he wants to “break through my own deftness… in order to reach the core of the image”.
He says it on the soundtrack while Frank Scheffer’s camera follows him in his studio. Perception is set in two internal spaces: the head of the artist and the place where he realises his ideas. Scheffer follows his subject closely in order to show what cannot be said. Occasionally he zooms out to briefly show Zandvliet’s large canvases. They are often close-ups, of hands, a mouth, the artist’s eyes, radiating an obsessive concentration. Because that is what painting is about, above all: looking. Winner KNF Award 2016.
Film details
- Country of production
- Netherlands
- Year
- 2016
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2016
- Length
- 55"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
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