World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 482 - Frans van Viegen

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 482 – Frans van Viegen
At Mishmash in Rotterdam I saw the photographic stories of Frans van Viegen. Most striking were large abstract works that changed as you walked past them. They are ‘lenticular works’, made on the basis of the stereographic technique from the 1910s of the last century. They provide a hallucinatory experience.
Frans van Viegen graduated from the Photo Academy Amsterdam in 2012 with an installation that showed interactive images based on hundreds of photos. These photos were processed in pieces. It was the beginning of a series Interactive Narratives. In this combination of fragments he shows his fascination for the city, nature and people. It is an alienating and fascinating experience at the same time.

To the Photo Academy Amsterdam
After 30 years in the banking world (ABN-Amro), Frans van Viegen picked up his old hobby, photography, in 2008, he tells me when I speak to him two weeks later in the Mishmash gallery. He enrolled in the Photo Academy in Amsterdam. “I thought I would follow that course for a year, as a kind of sabbatical, but old love never dies… In the end, I stayed for the entire four-year period.”
Initially, the plan was to graduate in portrait photography, but a discussion with and advice from Joost van den Broek caused the graduation direction to change drastically. Patricia de Ruijter became his new exam supervisor in autonomous photography. From that day on, Frans has not taken a “normal” photo anymore.
Frans had met Geert Mul while building a portfolio and was quite inspired by Geert’s versatile interactive work, and they clicked. A request to do an internship with him was quickly honored.

Something interactive
“For my graduation I was looking for something new, something interactive.” He was to the right place with Geert Mul. Frans himself was looking for suitable software, knowledge he had acquired during his many years at the bank. He wanted to make combinations based on a photo database.
It was nice working in Geert’s studio. “I developed my own work and helped him, sometimes I even got the role of producer. It also provided nice insights, when Geert went somewhere, I went along. He is a great source of inspiration.”

There was some discussion when he presented the concept and elaboration to the examination committee of the academy. ‘Is this something for the Photo Academy?’, some said. ‘Can Frans even take photographs?’ was even asked, but in the end the director of the academy thought it was fantastic. He passed cum laude.
He showed his installation based on 1000 photos in Loods 6 in Amsterdam. When people came to look, a new image and an accompanying sound emerged. Every viewer created his own images, provided with his own, accompanying sound. The examination committee with some sense of understatement: ‘this work is the youngest in the field of photography that we can see here’.

Lenticular
In the meantime, Frans was still with Geert Mul. In 2014, Mul received a large commission for the atrium of The Edge, Deloitte’s head office on the Amsterdam Zuidas. Mul filled it in spectacularly – based on a large photo database – with the work Lenticular Cloud, 35 large triangles in many colours with depth effect, 85 metres high, hanging from thin steel wires. The triangles move on the thermals of the building. It was made on the basis of stereography technology. It was presented in 2015.
Charles Wheatstone had discovered it in the early 19th century and in the 1910s photographers were taking it seriously. In stereo photography, two shots are taken, one for each eye. This can be done by shifting the camera a little between shots, or by using two cameras next to each other.

Since that year, 2015, Frans Viegen has been making lenticular work. “It is unique, you don’t see it anywhere. Yes, occasionally in postcards or in the advertising world. But there you see two images sliding over each other. In my works, 15/18 different images slide over each other. Many circles and squares. In almost all works I refer to places I have been, things, people I have met, sometimes everyday images. Often cityscapes, nature. I am in consultation with the printer all the time. ‘Frans, you are at the border’, I hear then. If there are too many images, it loses its effect. The multi-layered nature of his images invites people to interpret them themselves, to make their own story out of them. That is what I enjoy most.”

Mondrian and Hockney
Frans van Viegen’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2022, for example, he received an invitation from Hans van Helden to create and exhibit new work based on Mondrian’s early, naturalistic work in the Zonnehof, a building designed by Gerrit Rietveld. He selected 25 works, recorded them and cut the whole into many pieces from which he created a new whole. The results were remarkable; in the work ‘A Tribute to PM’ even the red, blue, yellow and white colours of Mondrian’s later abstract work appear.

Some time later, the same Zonnehof asked him if he wanted to participate in an exhibition honoring the painter Hockney. As luck would have it, he had recently seen a Hockney exhibition in Teylers Museum in Haarlem and had designed a book cover for one of his sons, inspired by a work by Hockney. In addition, it was sometimes said about earlier works that they resembled Hockney. So it was a no-brainer and Frans got to work. He made a self-portrait, for which he dressed himself in the same clothes as Hockney and he had himself photographed by Isa van Gemeren, photographer and daughter-in-law. Frans would not be Frans if a lenticular work would not also be made. For this he used many moving self-portraits. He also showed a series of 6 pinhole self-portraits with a nod to David Hockney.
“Always nice to be challenged.”

Interactive skull
We walk past the works. In addition to the lenticular works, there are also “regular” works, where Frans also likes to experiment with the different types of finishes. Fine art prints, Museum glass and recently a number of smaller format works on Chroma Luxe HD Metal print, a print sublimation technique that produces durable, light prints with an exceptional color depth – it looks like glass, but it is not.
And he made a skull in a box, titled ‘What E.L.S.E. – interactive skull’, as part of the SKULL 1.0 project, an initiative of 10dencegallery by Ron Weijers. It is interactive, the LEDs in the skull react to the walking viewer. There are several symbols incorporated, including the sign of Aya on the forehead of the skull, African symbol of endurance and resourcefulness.

Finally, what is his philosophy?

“I like to do new things. When I have done something for two or three years, I want something new. I follow an impulse, it is not planned. As an artist, you can do that more easily than in the business world. I have a beta, business background, but following my intuition I always make alpha-beta things, that surprise people and encourage them to create their own story.”
Images
1)EnCounters # B2 © Frans van Viegen 2020 20bij20 150 dpi, 2) Encounters 56© Frans van Viegen 2020 40 x 40 cm, 3) AnyWhereBlue © Frans van Viegen 2022 Lenticulair 118×118 cm, 4) BLINKOFANEYE-1©Frans-van-Viegen-2023 60×60 cm in baklijst, 5) Diasporen 2 © Frans van Viegen 40 x 40 cm, 6) Diasporen 3 © Frans van Viegen 40×40 cm, 7) Frans van Viegen © Nikos Kyriakidis, 8) Frans van Viegen part of 10dencegallery, 9) GOOUT © Fransvanviegen 2021 240 dpi, 10) Tribute to 150 PieterMondriaan 7 © Frans van Viegen 2022 90×90 cm

 

https://fransvanviegen.nl/
https://www.instagram.com/frans_van_viegen/
https://www.facebook.com/frans.vanviegen
https://www.mishmash.nl/fart-fine-art-pop-up-rotterdam/
https://10dencegallery.com
https://inzaken.eu/2024/07/21/de-hallucinerende-werken-van-frans-van-viegen/