Maak kennis met kunstschilder Leon Keer

Een onafhankelijk pad
 
Leon Keer (1970) volgt als kunstenaar een uitzonderlijk pad. In de praktijk van het ontwerpen en uitvoeren van grote reclamemuurschilderingen voor multinationals (sinds 1997) als Vrumona, Coca Cola, Schweppes, Amstel Bier, Heineken, Pepsi Cola, Douwe Egberts, Bavaria, Absolut, Red Bull, Reef, Evian, Maxxium, Royal Club en Remy Martin leerde hij het vak. Hij voerde opdrachten uit in Nederland, Duitsland en Australië. Regelmatig maakt hij als gevolg daarvan ook voor de kleinere bedrijven, veelal horecaondernemingen zoals discotheken, cafés, restaurants en hotels, maar ook voor de Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Vakbond FNV en voor FC Utrecht wandschilderingen voor het interieur en exterieur.

Dit jarenlang fulltime in opdracht schilderen en ontwerpen van grote taferelen leidde er automatisch toe, dat de kunstenaar meer en meer de behoefte voelde volledig vrije werken te schilderen en het is natuurlijk niet verwonderlijk dat in zijn vrije werk iets zou doorschemeren van de toegepaste stijlen en ervaring, die hij heeft verkregen door de commerciële reclame schilderkunst. Dit verklaart misschien ook de steeds weer terugkerende Pop Art kant van zijn vrije werk. Zijn werk had in de beginjaren van zijn ontwikkeling als kunstschilder (tot 2003) door de opvallende felheid van zijn kleurgebruik, door toepassing van heldere primaire en secundaire kleuren, een duidelijk verwantschap met het werk van Pop Art kunstenaars uit de jaren '60 en '70 van de vorige eeuw. Ook in de stylering van de vorm en het detail was duidelijk verwantschap waarneembaar met bekende Pop Art kunstenaars uit die tijd, zoals met Roy Liechtenstein, die zijn inspiratie o.a. haalde uit de stripboekcultuur.


 
Leon Keer, Madcow (2007), schilderij acrylverf op linnen, 60 x 150 cm, prijs opvraagbaar

Het schilderij 'Madcow' uit 2007 doet niet alleen aan Roy Liechtenstein of aan een commerciële reclame uiting denken, maar ook aan de stripboekenserie van oorlogsvlieger Buck Danny.

januari 2009

Leon Keer (1970) learned to paint through designing and producing large advertising murals for multinationals (since 1997) such as Coca-Cola, Schweppes, Heineken, Red Bull, Reef, Evian, Royal Club, Remy Martin and Absolut Vodka. He has executed commissions in the Netherlands, Germany and Australia. His knowledge of materials, acquired by painting on all kinds of foundations for his clients, led to an interest in experimenting with materials and techniques. Leon Keer works with a mixture of techniques, uses a rich variety of materials, ranging from professional acrylic paints to adhesives, solvents, primers and tar. His subjects and images are entirely contemporary: they could be freeze frames from a video clip. A message - formerly so important in all of Keer’s commercial work - also seems to be present in his own work. Current issues are reviewed, such as current environmental concerns and the livability of this world. The artist observes great impotence and with that a certain degree of indifference from the individual. Leon Keer is constantly aware of the beautiful versus the ugly, a contrast that he expresses and amplifies in his work and which he uses as a metaphor for live. His paintings reflect his thoughts, confronting the viewer with the diseased spirit of our times, visible decay counter-pointing a timeless longing for unspoiled beauty.
 

His inspiration - an introduction to his paintings

The titles by his paintings tell something about his inspiration. His subjects are caught in the life. He draws his inspiration from articles in newspapers and magazines, from incidents during his travels and from interviews, which he argues with other people. An inetersting example is the painting ‘Proselytising’. 


 
Proselytising means literally to reclaim somebody. Leon Keer was travelling in the United States of America and visited old concrete revetments nearby San Francisco. The atmosphere was not pleasant, it was abandoned, the terrain was half overgrown and everything was grey. The place inspired him to take pictures for instance of the blue chair. When he looked at it more closely, he saw that there were several bullet holes in it. It could of course be an object, that was used for shooting exercises. But on the spot he felt a cold shiver, when he realised that somebody could have been seated on that chair. The beautiful girl could haven been that person, who was seated or was going to be forced to sit on that chair. She holds her hands behind her back, her hands are maybe going to be tied. She seems to float in the air, because maybe at the moment of obligation, she leaves her body so that she doesn’t need to participate in this terror. Leon Keer depicts her vulnerability, by clothing her only in her underwear.
 
 
 
Good and Evil

It occurs to me, that when I look at the paintings of the artist, that some of his artworks from the period 2008/2009 have an obvious dark side. A girl with a fantastic drill object that has demolished a big building. An innocent girl that seems to be on the point to be killed or to be tortured. How about that? Leon Keer says himself that he is always looking for the beautiful versus the ugly, around towards right, seeking for contrast, deliberately creating tension as a metaphor for life. His paintings reflect his thoughts from his mind that he never can stop. Maybe he depicts also the sick spirit of the age and it is a frightening idea for the artist to become as the people, to whom he holds a mirror up by his paintings. 

In many of his paintings Leon Keer seems to paint about an arbitrary subject. In Au Pair for instance we see a rather sweet and naďve girl on the left, wanting to be an au pair. 

She thinks that she will do some light housework and will be the nanny, taking care of little children, in the family where she is going to stay as an au pair. We feel this young girl wants to do good in her life. Therefore it is not a coincidence that Leon Keer painted her half of the canvas so bright, the tone is very light in most parts, almost white. The shapes of her face are distinct and clear, but the artist has also exaggerated her looks - she is obviously not a real girl. She has the looks of an almost perfect doll anybody could play with. This is because the painter wants to point to a certain danger, since he knows that nowadays more and more of these girls worldwide, when they arrive abroad with their upright dreams, get into serious trouble. Their passports are confiscated by bad guys, lover boys, pimps and other brutes with evil intentions. She will be forced to be a prostitute and worse. Therefore he has given the right side of the canvas a dark atmosphere, the buildings looking unfriendly, undefined, foggy and unpredictable. For Leon Keer these big contrasts in all his paintings are important, for they symbolise as said before the big contrasts in human life. The nice little girl, at present still in the light, is about to enter the dark side. This is Leon Keer’s sublime transformation in a present-day image of an old theme in the arts: the battle between good and evil.

 
 
 
Leon Keer and the world of Contemporary Art
 
Although Leon Keer worked for years exclusively in the field of commercial art, it was inevitable that he would get in to contact with the more regular art world. Since 2005 he exhibited in various Dutch galleries in Amsterdam and Utrecht, and during Dutch art events and abroad. I learned to know him personally on a fair in the Martiniplaza (Groningen, The Netherlands), where he kept an artist demonstration. The passion, ambition, idears and thoughts, crafts, skills performed by this artist spoke directly to me and resulted there that Galerie Beeldkracht and Leon Keer cooperate nowadays intensely. Galerie Beeldkracht showed his works already at several Art Fairs, like the Open Art Fair (Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2009), Lineart (Gent, Belgium, 2009) and upcoming in March Primavera 2010 (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2010). The gallery published a small book, which contains pictures of the paintings that Leon Keer painted in 2009.