World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 516 - Stephan Keppel

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 516 – Stephan Keppel

I walk with Stephan Keppel through his exhibition SHARDS in Het Archief Artspace in Rotterdam. He stayed in the Rotterdam house of artist/curator Herman Lamers in the last week of 2024 and made a series of prints about the city.

Keppel feels at home in this former City Archive. It is familiar territory for him. He previously worked with the City Archives of Amsterdam and Utrecht, but also, for example, the renowned CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture) in Montreal to conduct research into material about New York. In fact, Keppel created in Rotterdam a self-generated assignment for a fictional Archive. Stephan: “I think that confusion is great. That this place for artists is now called The Archive and was a former City Archive. And that I am responding to that by going to work with that city after being invited.”

City Symphonies

For him, a city is a collection of elements that repeat, vary and multiply. He creates a subjective database of these elements, which he in turn repeats, varies, distorts and multiplies in such a way that a new perspective on the city is created.

Keppel physically moves through cities and takes photos of the city that he prints out on a large-format copy machine. City symphonies, he calls them. Sometimes he zooms in on a fragment of a city, a viaduct or a building, then again on a large cultural city or a small secondary city, it depends on the invitation.

Such a small place is, for example, the famous Vondelbrug in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, which has been given a different purpose over the years. From the provos and hippies who gathered there to the latest graffiti. Many anarchist political slogans. Stephan: “With a project under this viaduct I won the Somfy Photography Award 2021 under the title Gimme Shelter.”

A frieze on the 6th floor of Het Archief

The prints from that copying machine hang above the elongated horizontal windows through which you see the same city, below that is a third layer with light boxes with transparent small prints that follow all the walls like a line. Keppel transformed these light boxes into a cinematic light line, reminiscent of microfiches – often used in archives – and exposed film rolls. The space where he exhibits was, as mentioned, once part of the former city archives.

The whole reads like a ‘frieze’ that follows the shape of the exhibition space. A ‘frieze’ is a term in architecture for any extensive, narrative representation of people, mythological figures or animals within a clear framework. “They are small images. I am also interested in fly-posting, which is also a kind of frieze. I like working with materials that are almost nothing.”

He has previously made prints about other cities, such as Paris, where he used the colour gold, and New York, where silver was central. Keppel’s versatile working method is part of his ongoing research into public space, urban structures and reproduction techniques.

Combining shards

We start with a historical photo by Jan Kamman with a lonely Laurenskerk in the middle of a bombed plain. Stephan: “Much of Rotterdam was lost in the war. This photo was a find, a ‘shard’, combined with other finds I made in 2024, the history of the city got a face.”

The Maastunnel, with a motif over it, old facades in Spangen, the Essalam Mosque in Zuid, the Afrikaanderplein, a stairwell, mooring posts, windows designed by Van Doesburg that were put in the bulky waste, a fragment of a statue by Henry Moore, a mattress from Schiedam, the clock from Herman Lamers’ house, the reflection in the window in the Schietbaanlaan and the graphic lines of another street. Many grid-like structures and graphic lines with an occasional graceful curl. Like on the print of the Koolhaas building De Rotterdam. The curl is a light spot, he says, because the camera made a ‘mistake’.

Coincidence or not, he came across many connections between Rotterdam and Spain. “I photographed in the Spangen district, which is a corruption of Spain; that district is not far from the Spanish polder and the Van Doesburg windows that I found and captured were in the Spanish bend!”

Although he sells prints, the prints in this exhibition are pasted directly onto the wall, like those of street posters, but more refined. “These prints end up in the trash afterward. This is very liberating, I prefer to work on a commission basis rather than through galleries.”

But he also makes books that are published by Fw:Books, where he works closely with Hans Gremmen.

Does Stephan have a key work?

He does. It is a project in Den Helder that he did in 2011 and of which the book Reprinting the City, Den Helder was published in 2012. “Den Helder was a very empty city, a crisis city, a city you really didn’t want to be in. In the thrift store I found a printer that I got going and with which I got prints out. Then one thing led to another.”

A year later, he received a residency at the Van Doesburghuis Meudon via the Mondriaan Fund. “I started working in one of the rougher parts of Paris, in the periphery, partly built on old military fortifications. I found things on the street, took photographs at illegal markets. The book that was published about it is called Entre Entree, Paris. I saw that at the entrance to a supermarket (an E had been scratched out). It is a report of the stay in an ‘in-between area’. I feel very much at home in in-between areas.”

Then he went to New York, where he started at the largest thrift store. “They offered absolutely everything there. I thought: ‘here lies the sediment of New York’. Then I started exploring the city with the things I had come across in this store in the back of my mind.”

Freewheeling through the city

The Amsterdam writer K. Schippers looked at the city in a similar way. Schippers had written a book ‘An evening in Amsterdam’ (Een avond in Amsterdam) (2013) in which he described a short walk with so much detail that it seemed like an expedition of years. Stephan became friends with Schippers. It also ended up in the book Soft Copy Hard Copy. “You walk around the city and pay attention to what jumps out. Sometimes you notice different things than other times. The best thing is when you really walk around freewheeling, then you notice the most. If you are a little open to it, something always happens.”

How long has he been an artist?

Since 1998. He studied painting at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 1994 to 1998. He initially made large woodcuts and portraits of favorite writers, such as W.F. Hermans. “There is a connection in those woodcuts with what I do now. The gouging, the architectural.” He has now been invited for a residency in Japan for three weeks. “Japan has a great tradition of printing. I want to do something with the refinement of the country, research damage and things that are broken in the city of Tokyo, and see how they deal with that. I will also look for things that are for sale; of course also paper and/or other media. I will collaborate with a Japanese photographer. I already exhibited in Japan last year.”

What is his experience of art life?

“For a long time I preferred going to concerts to visual arts gatherings. But I do follow it, I am interested in new developments. I taught at the HKU and did city projects there with young artists in the city of Utrecht.”

Finally, what is his philosophy?

“With an open attitude towards space, I try to make complex structures visible with simple means.”

And as an explanation: “I prefer to work with simple materials such as printers that architects and construction companies used to duplicate construction drawings, for example, they only accept thin paper, no color. I have to get those machines going, but I have become somewhat skilled at it.”

https://stephankeppel.info/
https://www.instagram.com/stephan_keppel/?hl=nl
https://hetarchiefartspace.com/
https://inzaken.eu/2025/03/02/stephan-keppel-ik-creeer-een-soort-van-alternatieve-indexen-van-steden/