Visual artist Casper Faassen (1975) has been fascinated from a young age by unattainable 17th century artist such as Rembrandt and Van Goyen. The drawing of aspects of life that are unreachable is something Faassen developed when he was young. Faassen himself calls this ‘recollecting’. He makes the elusive his own by adding multiple layers. By applying these multiple layers he plays with the tension between the what disappears and appears, between the visible and invisible.
Although Faassen nowadays is more well known for his photographic work, he started his career as a painter. This still influences his work. Within his photographs he attempts to create a distance from the depicted object, similarly to how he experiences this when viewing paintings. He achieves this through an extra layer of glass or fog in between the image and the audience. Faassen further refers to painterly artworks by administering the Craquelure technique. This is an effect that traditionally appears when fast-drying acrylic paint is applied on top of slow-drying acrylic paint.
In the series ‘Les Marées’ or ‘The Tides’ Faassen collaborated with dancers from The Dutch National Ballet and The Dutch Dance Theater. This series initially was established through the organization Dance4life who asked him to photograph dancers from the National Ballet. Faassen was so inspired by this collaboration that the series ‘Les Marées’ was conceived.
Group exhibition