Edwin Zwakman: Facades by Kate Bush

ISBN: ‎ 9789070149802

Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1999

Paperback, 48 pages

The main theme of the Dutch artist Edwin Zwakman (born 1969) is photographic reality. it is reality, however, that the artist himself contrives down to the tiniest detail with the help of large maquettes that he constructs from cardboard, cottonwool, rubbish bags and paint. 

Canals, dikes, polder land, motorways, road junctions, building sites and highrise flats are the subjects of Zwakman's photographs. With these Zwakman dishes up a thoroughly  Dutch landscape. A landscape whose characteristic feature is a high level of construction. This method of dubling the constructed landscape in the often extremely large phots of home-made maquettes makes it amply clear that 'construction' is a central concern of Edwin Zwakman's work. It is work that by its nature is on the one hand related to that of such artists as Thomas Demand and Lois Renner, but on the other hand - through its choice of subject - initiates a dialogue with work of photographers from the so-called Becher School, like Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth. 

This publication, containing an essay by Kate Bush, and an interview with the artist by Jaap Guldemond, illustrates how this still small but fascinating oeuvre is finding its own way within the wider field of photographic art.