Astrid van Rijn – Carbon-The Netherlands
In recent years, Van Rijn has primarily focused on drawing and photography: two art forms that seem to be completely separate from each other. Her wish was to combine both of these art forms in to one. This resulted in the journey which eventually led to the series “Koolstof”(carbon).
Astrid photographs landscapes, which serve as building blocks to create a new biotope: built by digitally combining her photos into one image. When she’s satisfied with the image, Astrid prints it, and then proceeds to draw on the image with Siberian chalk, charcoal, ink and conté.
Van Rijn forces the audience to look at her work up close, to take in all the detail, to wander around a world that is within us all. A habitat where life and death, light and darkness, happiness and sadness, beauty and ugliness all come together as one.