“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Wednesday December 16th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Wednesday December 16th — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Wednesday December 16th — —

Jurre Blom

We discovered the talented Dutch painter Jurre Blom when his work was exhibited in last Summer’s graduation show of the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. Clearly standing out in the multi-story building filled with fine art graduate work, the captivating realistic paintings of Jurre even proved to be amongst our favorites from all Dutch academies, if not the favorite. The artist, being a child of the digital era, creates work directly representing remarkable scenes he finds on the internet. With an endless stream of photographs being unleashed every day, this field of inspiration proves to serve him endlessly. Rather unusual frames portraying familiar situations, often-times evoking a sense of awkwardness or discomfort, but always succeeding to intrigue – the photographs Blom selects are personal insights found through numerous chains of visually similar image searches through Google images, starting from his personal database of photographs of ‘in between’ moments. Keep an eye on this highly promising name!

I started collecting photographs that are ‘incomplete’, with all kinds of narrative elements, but never telling a full story. The scenes portray a kind of ‘in between’ moment. Something beforehand happened and there is still something about to occur, but it is not clear what this will be. Ultimately, it is my intention to portray these uncanny situations in the best possibly way. Seemingly familiar scenes, with for some unknown reason something wrong with it.

Born in the East of The Netherlands in the city of Ermelo, Jurre moved to Utrecht when he started his studies there, finding his personal interest and focus on painting after the multidisciplinary first year of his fine art specialization. Having nurtured his interests in modern and classical critical philosophy parallel to his study could very well have been the intellectual trigger to reveal the absurdity of everyday life, which he portrays through his paintings in all its rich glory. Yet, despite his interest in theory, Blom has stated not being a fan of over-theorizing his or art in general, advocating to let the images speak for itself. A vision we can only concur with as every single one of his incredible images succeeds to capture us time after time.

Jurre is currently holding a one year residency of the Dooyewaard Stichting in Blaricum, a small town right in the heart of the Netherlands, which will show his new work at the end of the Summer of 2016.

For more work and information see here