Artist:		Tobias Baanders
Technique:		oilpaint
Date of exhibition:		March 23 - April 29, 2001

Tobias Baanders

Tobias grew up in one of the swampiest regions of The Netherlands: Vinkenveen. And until this day the painter lives and works in this utterly Dutch landscape. From his childhood onwards, he experienced the most incredible adventures on the drenched borders of a brook in which life was swarming with its most bewildered manifestations. This unknown world must have laid the foundation for his highly imaginative art in which fish plays a prominent role.

Winterqueen, 2001, alkyd/oil

In the biblical story of Tobias a fish is caught and from its intestines a medicine is prepared which will cure the blindness of Tobias' father. That blindness Tobias Baanders observes in the world around him, in the both destructive and selfish activities of men. In his desperation he lets fish fly and begs the owl for wishdom, which is only to be attained by men disguised as fish ? as is to be seen on the painting "Camouflage" from 1994. The largest fishlike animal is, like us, a mammal: the whale. But the structure of its brain is more complicated than ours and perhaps that is precisely what gives creature the capacity to float above our snowy polder-landscape, as if to neutralize its own weight, to be less 'weighty' in spite of its enormous capacities.

The bird performance, 2000, alkyd/oil

With his imagery that is as bizarre as it is real, Tobias Baanders wants to restore man's eyesight, to wake him up from the slumber of his consciousness. Before him Breughel did. And Bosch. Not the least, these two, but now we have Baanders.