Diana Ramaekers

DIANA RAMAEKERS, multimedia artist

1. 2. 3. 4.

2. Light installation with 2 projectors, 2 x 3 m.

3. "Séquence of lumière I", 1995, black & white silkscreen print 40 x 60 cm.

4. "Exposed Wall-Piece", 1998, black & white inkjet print 42 x 25 cm.

BIOGRAPHY

Born 1970

EDUCATlON

1998 - 1993 Academy of Visual Arts Maastricht - the Netherlands

1993 - 1996 Academy of Visual Arts Düsseldorf - Germany

since 1995 Master of Arta of Prof Nan Hoover

AWARDS / GRANTS

1994 Joseph und Anna Bassbenderpris der Stadt Brühl Germany first prize for printmaking of the city BrühI

1994 Grant from the Association for Visual Arts Amsterdarm

1995 SchoIarship from the Foundation BKVF - the Netherlands

1996 Traveling -stipendium: Association for Visual ArIs DüsseIdorf

1996 Basisstipendium from the Foundation BKVB the Netherlands

COMMISSIONS

199A Intersystems GmbH DüsseIdorf - Germany: New ideas from young international artists for the Trade Fair

1995 Art and Culture e.V. DüsseIdorf - Germany: Realisation of a site specific Iight installation in the architecture of the bunker for Visual Arts in DüsseIdof

STUDY TRAVELS

1994 Norway: the island Sula and Trondheirn

1995 Italy: Venice

1996 Canary IsIands: Lanzarote

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1993 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF GRAPHIC FINE ARTS TOULOUSE: Art tower of the DASA in TouIouse, France

1993 INTERNATIONAL BIENNAL MAASTRICHT: Academy of Visual Arts and Multiple Sounds Festival in Maa:tiicht - Holland

1994 GRAFINNOVA 1994 GRAPHIC ARTS TRIENNIAL: Ostrobothnian Museum . Vaasa, Finland

1994 WOMEN LIGHT UP THE NIGHT: Art manifestation in the Kunsthaus Tacheles - Berlin, Germany

1995 WORSHOP NEW MEDIA BERN: Workshop and exhibition in new media in the Steamcentral in Bern, Switzerland

1995 NCM - AMSTERDAM: Exhibition under the auspices of Gallery Wanda Reif

1996 NAN HOOVER AND HER GLASS: Gallery Hubertus Wunsik - Dusseldorf, Germany

1996 INTERNATIONAL AVIATION AND AEROSPACE-EXHlBITION: Ministries in Bonn and Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany

1997 CONTEMPORARY FEMALE ARTISTS OF THE SUTI-GALLERY: Callery Suti - Bern, Switzerland

1997 MINI BIENNAL GRAPHIC FINE ARTS OLOFSTRÖM, OIofström - Sweden

1997 ANNUAL EXHIBITION THE BBK AACHEN / EUREGION: Museum Ludwig Forum for International Contemporary Arts - Aachen, Germany

INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS

1994 JOSEPH UND ANNA FASSBENDERPREIS DER STADT BRUHL: First grafic prize and solo exhibition in the Town hall of Brühl - Germany

1996 LIGHT - TENSION

Gallery Suti, Bern, Switzerland

STATEMENT OF MY GRAPHICAL WORK

Diana Ramaekers

My graphical work and drawings proceed from my light- and video installations. They are the concrete results of those subjects who occupy me constantly: light, space, transparency, darkness silence and the relationship between all those elements. In 1993 I started to work more intensively with graphical art with my series of colored wood prints. These pieces are all based on my first light installation Mu'sica vi'siva; light, color and space were the most essential aspects. In 1994 I won the Joseph und Anna Fassbenderprize of the city of Brühl - Germany with these prints and this resulted in a completed series of 16 pieces.

Soberness came into my work in '95/96 and I made black & white silk-screens inspired on new light pieces of that time. The following year I was working on two new prints and photography became more and more important in my work as a medium to translate my audiovisual installations into prints. So I made them in offset - technique ( b & w) with strong light structures.

But I wanted to intensify the 3 - dimensional aspect of the contrasting light ( as I was also doing in my light-pieces) and while searching for that I eventually came to another way and came to the electrostate prints. In large, long sizes, the prints show parts of my studio wall. In close connection are the black & white inkjet-prints, but now they are even more clear, intensive and with more contrasting light-structures of the wall space.

Most recent are the colored inkjet-prints, still sober and inspired on my video project about the window and its inner space behind it: "Inside Out". The pieces are translations of video stills in which a window floats by silent and slowly through a black space. The video lines in the prints form a subtle, yet important quality of the work.

STATEMENT AND DESCRIPTION OF PAST WORK

Diana Ramaekers

In my work I'm mainly dealing with light, space and the movement of tight in space and time, it's material and immaterial aspects, transparency and the function of color and form in light and space. Usually I make Iight-pieces in the form of an installation of moving and dissolving projected light with 2,4, or 6 projectors, sometimes involving the site and it's architecture. In 1993 I started with Mu'sica Vi'siva, a piece with 2 projectors and music of the Renaissance and the 20th century. Here I worked out the interesting contrasts of the music, translating them into visual images of light and space. My next work: Lumiére (1994) was not literally about and with music; I was more interested in the underlying structure of a musical composition in the rhythm of the images. So time began to be more important in my work.

In 1995 I worked in Switzerland in Bern during the workshop for New Media in the big Steam central. Here I made another interesting step :I went away from my usual projecting size (2.00 x 3.00 M ) and I made a panoramic light installation called "Water panorama" from 2.00 x 6.00 M wide. I worked with abstract images of light of an underwater world. In the workshop were also involved students and artists from Basel, Geneva, Bern and Karlsruhe. My professor Nan Hoover ( Academy of Visual Arts Düsseldorf) and Marie Jo Lafontaine were also invited there. After the workshop we had an exhibition in the steam central in Bern. In the same year I was commissioned to make a site-specific Light-installation in the Art-Bunker of Düsseldorf. The piece is called: "Spatium Novum" ( New Spaces ) and here I had the opportunity to work with the architecture of the space. I made the work with 4 projectors and every cycle lasted 10 minutes.

In 1996 I made "Miniature Light spaces " a very small piece of 20 x 30 cm and 2 projectors for the group exhibition in the Wunschik Gallery in Düsseldorf - Germany. I also made the light piece "space Cycle" and I presented it in the Academy of Visual Arts in Düsseldorf. In November of '96 I was invited to have a solo exhibition in Gallery Suti in Bern, Switzerland. In the piece " Light - Tension I worked with the extreme immaterial aspect of light and it's movements in space. During the installation which is running constantly, you can hardly see anything and bit by bit your eyes get used to the darkness and you see the faint and immaterial images of light, which create a certain tension in your eyes because you can't focus. It is as if you are looking at night but can't see colors nor grasp the image. But further on, color and light are growing brighter towards the end and fade down again to start at the point were it all began and were complete darkness comes back again.

In 1997 I joined the group exhibition in Suti's Gallery in Bern during the Gallery weekend of the city with the theme: Contemporary female Artists. I showed a videotape of light-installations there. I also made the piece "Behind Open Doors " in which I'm working with the space of an existing door way and projecting images of contrasting images on both sides of the projection-sheet of architect paper. Inside and outside were very important, not only as the literal space, but also as a metaphor for the inner and outer landscape inside of man. Light and it's movement in time were also essential for the installation. My next challenge would be to make a site-specific light piece and work with space and the architecture available at the site.