Note for potential collaborators

Here you can find some insight of my art practice and what brought me to you. I tried to be brief yet understandable and wrote it with the desire to hear from you.

I paint, I take pictures, write texts, create objects, videos and installations. My practice is primarily characterised by a deconstruction of myself as an artist and the systems within the art world that determine value, meaning and authenticity today. 

My work usually starts with a question that is triggered by observing or feeling a rupture within a situation or context I find myself in. A lot of times this addresses my very art practice itself, since the world around it is an intriguing field of subjectivity.

By making visible the methods with which something is attributed value or by elevating those very processes into the work itself i try to bring into focus the presuppositions of the creator, the visitor, the buyer or seller of art. These processes as a result become the medium of work and are governed by a drawn-out web of rules. As a creator these rules seemingly give me a foothold and apparent sense of control within the work. However the ‘end result’ I can only partially affect as the established rules are largely determined by the interactions between context, visitors or participants. 

For me, both the creative process and the exhibition are part of the work: my work is thus never a "closed" object that is formed in a studio and kneaded in my hands until its final appearance. It is brought to life in the context of an exhibition. The visitor is an essential factor. What is happening? How does he/she react?

Chronological list of works that reflect this interest and method:

1. 2006 Graduating BA Rietveld Academy. I made no work of my own but (visually) participated in the works of all my fellow peers. It addressed the importance of a degree show. Questioned arts pathway towards individualism. I was shining in absence. I graduated with honors!

2. 2009 MA St Martins: aim -> the whole year at St Martins everyone was busy with the final show, when Saatchi and all the hotshots would come. I wanted to find 3 students also graduating-one from Goldsmith, Royal Collage & Slade to make one work together and showing it each in our ‘showtime week’ after each other under our own name. This failed. 
I graduated with an installations in which 7 men puke the colours of the rainbow in each others mouths.

3. 2010 24 paintings
Will value increase or decrease when a painting, that is not that great on its own, is multiplied 24 times?

4. 2011 20 paintings
Can you copy a feeling? 
An abstract painting project made according to an existential manual. Twenty times, 30 minutes a painting. With instructions like mix the white with yellow, stripe from left to right, walk to line 2 and look) Priced according to my personal taste, from ugly ( cheap) to beautiful (expensive). Ugly (cheap) sold proportionately like hot sandwiches on sale.

5. 2013 The Gallery as Hotel
Value of the market, the system. What is the way of looking at it. The gallerist takes a percentage of me, or I take a percentage of them. I decided to turn the gallery into an Airbnb hotel room. Sold out.

6. 2015 Stick or Twist
Value of craft vs value of concept. 20 art buyers bought a blank canvas. They became part and rulers since I kept them updated of the process of the painting and it was up to each of them to decide to stop ( because they liked it like this) or make me continue, each time they made me continue they had to pay extra. A knock out race between artist and her buyers addressing the difficult quest: when is a painting finished?

7. 2016 Copying a young and upcoming artist in the same show 
iWhat happens when you copy someones work and show it in the same show you are both in? You get a conversation about art, not about plagiarism.

My collaborative CV
what can I be good for

Aukje Dekker
Female 33
Dutch and English speaking little bit of Spanish/French and a bit more of German

- Mother of 3 year old boy, so practiced in patience.
- Smoker, but can do that outside and wash my hands after.
- Good brainstormer; can listen and have input.
- Left handed
- Hearing impaired ( both ears medium)
- Hard worker.
- Pretty sensitive but not a cry baby
- Handy, can work with drill, wood, saw etc.
- Can work with epoxy, polyester, polystyrene
- Can paint and mix paint (acrylics/ oils)
- Can be pretty precise
- But with really precise work a bit inpatient
- Can make photos and master photoshop
- Can make semi professional videos and master Final Cut Pro
- Ok handwriting
- Weird and inappropriate at small talk
- Know my fair bit of art history
- Not an intellectual but intellectual
- I have my opinions
- Like Manet over Monet
- Perfectionist
- Pretty funny ( stupid to say, too important not to mention)