User:Zandmotor/sandbox

Gerco de Ruijter is a photographer and filmmaker, born in Vianen (The Netherlands) 1961.

De Ruijter’s photographs, or rather: the images he carefully selects, reveal an unthought-of play of colors and lines. Often, it is not easy to recognize the landscape even if definite elements give indications. The images dwell between the recognizable and the abstract; depending on where De Ruijter sends up his kites and cameras, they hesitate to acknowledge if they are pastures, salt marshes, canals, tree tops, or rather an abstract painting with Mondrianesk or Art Brut qualities. Like the Gestalt Image: is it duck, or hare? De Ruijter’s question is: landscape, or abstract? Or both? This is what makes it so fascinating: the viewer commutes from sensation to sensation. The images are nothing more than pictures of the earth. At the same time, though, they have detached themselves from the earth and it is as if the viewer loses grip. (Peter Delpeut, Pleidooi voor het Treuzelen, 2011)

For his short films, De Ruijter used a large amount of collected images found in Google Earth for CROPS (2012), Playground (2014) and Grid Corrections (2016) The soundtracks for these films were made by Michel Banabila.

Gerco de Ruijter exhibited in the National Gallery, Praag, Museu Serralves, Porto, the George Eastman House, Rochester NY and the Neue Pinakothek, Munich. He has had solo exhibitions in Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam (1997) Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2000, 2011, 2014) Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2009) the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC (2013)and the Ulrich Museum in Witchita Kansas (2015)