The Painter

Kenya Thu 29-07-2004

The Painter
By a Correspondent

The Painter (www.painter.nl) is traveling, doing -functional art-, participating with a community, he needs the spontaneous dialogue with the public. He paints on billbords at the street.

August/September 1998 in Kenya passers-by and lookers-on were invited to write down their thoughts about what was on the billboard. These statements were pinned up until they covered the whole painting. In the evening the painter took down the statements and painted over his previous night's work. He is interacting like a medium, not on his own but working together with the local artists.

The painter feels at home when he is far away from conventional art that he found out to be preserved, pretentious and lifeless. People do not have to visit the museums and art galleries to appreciate works of art. You can find the works of art on the street.

Rene Klarenbeek is a painter on the move. He has developed a billboard concept in which he collects ideas from the public and uses them as the inspirations for his paintings. Nairobi is his fifth stop over in his world tour having been to Brazil, Cuba, South Africa and Colombia

Asked why he did not begin the project in his home turf, Netherlands, Rene argued that as an artist he preferred to be an outsider 'looking in' because that gives him impressions a fresh look. He arrived in Nairobi at the invitation of the Netherlands embassy shortly after the August 7 bombing of the US embassy in Kenya

After receiving more that two thousand statements on how Kenyans reacted to the bomb blast, Rene, together with his assistant, Patrick Mukabi, went to work and drew on their billboard (situated outside Kencom House), their impression of the horror.

Although the painting, like many others was erased everyday to make way for another and is uploaded to the internet. The public statements are on display at the National Museum.

Rene maintains that the project was inspired, like all art, by his discontent with life. He argued that there were many things that needed to be said and he felt that he could say them through his work. That is why he selected the current venue where the billboard is situated as it is a central meeting point for people from all walks of life. The Netherlands embassy is also less than a hundred yards away.

Rene and Mukabi represent the emerging school of thought subscribed to by contemporary Kenyan artists which believes that art is only meaningful when taken to the people.

But these two painters have gone a step further by deriving the inspiration for their works directly from the ideas compiled by the people, thereby making the people both the creators and consumers of art. As Rene aptly put it:

"art is here to see people if the people come to see art".

The artists believe that their efforts can help to heal the wounds that afflict us as a society by portraying them on the billboard.

One of the ways of doing this is by allowing people to freely express their feeling, what they think is the problem and what they think about it. This has been the secret behind the succes of their project as the Nairobi people see it as representing their views and sentiments.

Posted By: Allan Kapten

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