Happy Days
Pacific islands in color
Neptunes guests (can be part of bititch)
Pacific tribal connections
Neptune's Gate
Moana Lisa
Marching Colours
Embrace
Jan Huijbers
Jan Huijbers 27-4-2010Description of work
“The intention of my work is to make you aware of the well-being of the Ocean. For me the Ocean is the most beautiful thing in the world with all its blue and purity. Nowhere else are the colours so brilliant as here in the Pacific. But those colours are fading as well as its creatures. They (the Ocean) don’t have the power to stop the abuse and attack from human activity. Their spirit is enclosed in the story shown in the art, to tell us to make a connection / bridge of respect to their world. Restoring this respect will give us both the rights to live, destruction will end both worlds.
Brief biography
Jan is a full time artist currently residing in New Plymouth Taranaki-New Zealand. In his art career he has been working many years in an arts team creating huge sculptures for the yearly famous flower Corso in Zundert ,The Netherlands. Been commissioned by Gilze Rijen for the new City Council building; the Trappisten Abbey in Zundert and designing a 300 anniversary flag for a guild in Klein Zundert. Migrating to Aotearoa in 1983 from the Netherlands. Jan has since adopted the Pacific influence and develops his own insights of its methodologies. As a practicing artist, he is chairman of the North Taranaki Community Arts Council and a committee member of the Creative Communities Advisory Committee in New Plymouth. He has joined in selected group and solo exhibitions, created mural art and led light windows for a school institution. He has exhibited internationally and locally, throughout the North and South Islands. Selected shows include: Mishima Japan 1992: Australia Melbourne “Chapel of Chapels Gallery”2003, Vancouver Canada 2007 “City of Arts”. Illustrator for the Puke Ariki Museum creating pre-European Maori images with consent and collaboration of the Maori tribal chiefs and elders. Solo exhibition at the Percy Thomson Gallery 2005- Stratford and Puke Ariki Museum 2006 in New Plymouth. Nominated for the “Martin Hughes Contemporary Pacific Art Award” 2005- Auckland. “Two artist shows”at the “Pumphouse Gallery” 2006- Auckland and “The Hauraki House Gallery” 2008 in Coromandel. In 2009 a solo exhibition at the “Puke Ariki Museum”; collaborated exhibitions at the “Percy Thomson Gallery” in Stratford. In Feb.2010 a exhibition at the “Real Tart Gallery“ in New Plymouth.
Tapa Moana , paintings of symbolic Ocean Patterns by Jan Huijbers.
4-2010 The works of art are of organic and geometric images inspired by the exquisite design of ocean creatures, the tapa tradition of Pacific Islands nations and the priceless treasures of the ocean itself. Most are paintings in acrylic and a part are in oils and range between 500x700 to 1500x1200. Two solo exhibitions in the last five years were hold at the Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth. The first one was called “Ocean Script” and the second one “Tapa Moana”. Walking Colours is a ‘walk through painting’ composed of a variety of shapes cut out from each other. It enables the viewer to experience the three dimensionality of the work by walking through it. ‘Ocean deluge’ incorporates a light projection of moving genetic features projected on to a painting of similar material. Jan says about his work: my oceanic art is inspired by the patterns found on sea creatures. These patterns do not uphold universal ideas of what art is or what it is for, nor conform to the general character and effect of images and art forms, but speak of a symbolic awareness about what lives out there in the ocean and how it needs nurtured and preserved. Many of the works communicate visually on a number of different levels, alluding to practitioners such as Jackson Pollac, tapa cloth from the Pacific and contemporary scientific imagery from genetics and environmentalism. To pick for example one work out of the series named “Tapa Moana –Elementary Basics” this is an acrylic on unstretched canvas, size 1750x900mm. The repeated geometrical features come from a pattern found on the Terebra Maculata shell living in the Pacific Ocean. These are shown in their infant geometrical shapes as well as fully-grown adult in arced and curved forms. The work acknowledge the Tapa cloth tradition of the Pacific (which uses symbolic land based images such as the moon, stars and flowers in natural dyes on a fabric made from the bark), but extends it in both the medium and the imagery to sea-based symbolic images and mathematical symbols. Jan’s work, using repeating yet subtly-changing images originating from the sea, takes us through a colourful visual journey through modernity and Pacifica culture, to a new phase of synthesis.
You can see Jan Huijbers work at http://virtual.tart.co.nz/Jan/ocean.htm Jan is a full time artist currently residing in New Plymouth,Taranaki-New Zealand. He is married with 2 adult children.
