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Bart van Leeuwen

Manipulations

Bart van Leeuwen’s hyper-surreal images bring forth a self-prescribed version on problems in our world’s reality. Placing fictive and/or non-fictive characters in a historical and/or futuristic context, Bart’s illustrations are sometimes difficult to grasp, provoking and frequently packed with a heavy punch. This doesn’t go to say that his illustrations aren’t comedic or contain a thousand words, as they surely do. All of this creates certainty that the viewers of Bart’s work often have ambivalent feelings after their first confrontation with his illustrations.

That is precisely what Bart van Leeuwen tries to achieve with his illustrative work: “Life is all about contrast. It’s the opposites that give life its delightful flavor; without evil there’s no good; without hate there’s no love; without death, no life. A good illustration should contain a certain contrary quality,” thus Bart. “It forces the frog to think.”

Through this daring approach, the illustrations of Bart van Leeuwen obtain an interpretable character, one that preludes on the mind and soul. Life is relative, or so Bart believes. Besides, depicting an inflexible viewpoint is quite uninteresting and according to Bart, impossible: “Everything has been anticipated. The only “interesting” subject is the inner-self, the ego, as that is completely unique.” Instead of making an impression from the outside, Bart van Leeuwen allows himself to be inspired by his emotions that in turn allow him to give form to them by reflecting them on our delirious society.

Despite the alarming reality of his work, you continue to guess at the actual facts of his illustrations. It is up to the viewer to fill in those missing links.

Illustrations

Regarding his illustrations: There’s nothing more beautiful than developing a concept with child-like simplicity. A concept that has begun taking shape and living its own life after being exposed to unreasoning fear and doubt. With some tasteful finger-pointing at the 1950s, Bart van Leeuwen independently and acutely stretches his creative mind as he delightfully entertains crowds as a neo-protagonist of popart. At the hand of his sharp but humor striking illustrations he childishly brings the consequences of an Islamized Netherlands into public view. His illustrations are not focused on the teasing of Muslims and go far beyond the hype that a Western script can create. Rather than a simple cartoon where he sporadically plays with sentence structure at a self-Islamized Netherlands, his illustrations are an expression of his sincere deep thought and truest emotion.

Framework

The framework that Bart van Leeuwen spits out inbetween his manipulations and illustrations can be regarded as a collection of metaphorical leftovers wherein current concepts are being represented in the most rigorous sense of their meaning.

Placing a collage of shadows over an overexposed photo realistic background, and putting a blood-red pressure on top, evokes a sinister whole that most reminds of the vision of a feverish child.

This collection 'ominous Polaroids' can, just as his manipulations, often be taken in more than one way and will eventually lead to a surprising yet alarming climax.