about

 

Carolien Scholtes worked from 1987 to 2008 as a scenographer, filmmaker, initiator of multidisciplinary projects, and lecturer at institutions including the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She designed the format for Res Publica, a two-year project about the constitution that traveled throughout the provinces (1997-1998), initiated and shaped De verlaten tijd (The Abandoned Time), a project about forms of conversation at Dasarts (2000), and created a room service trolley containing seven films about the history of the Lloyd Hotel. 

In 2008, she suffered brain damage, a turning point in her life and work. She turned inward and began working independently in her studio. 

There she creates installations that she photographs or films and then destroys. These installations are made of everyday materials such as carpet, vinyl, elastic, garbage bags, clamps, and wires. Their meaning is lifted out of context, reversed, and turned inside out, neutralizing them and rendering them as pristine as marble or paint.
You could say that there are two currents in her work. One is more concerned with the violent and absurd sides of society, and the other deals with the mystical world of the inexpressible.

Her work is included in the collections of Boymans van Beuningen, de Amsterdam UMC kunstcollectie and Fondation Custodia in Parijs.

Scholtes projects have always been endorced by werkbeurzen en projectsubsidies by Het Fonds van Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst, Fonds voor de Podiumkunsten en het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

Artist curator Martin Fenne about Scholtes (2023):
'The impulse to analyze the theater as a machine that stages drama brings to light the deeper structures of the 'mise en scene'. And then it turns out that the drama can also take place there when the materials and props  play their own role and our associative capacity is called upon.
This impulse has everything to do with the desire to be in and with the world. Time and again, material resistance is consciously sought out and deployed'

In responce to the series Dear Mr Schwitters (2018):
'The process starts by acting from existing knowledge. From my experience as a scenographer and a director, I know what it takes to create a strong image.
I start with a rough design. I choose the background materials, usually bits of carpet, lino and the like. Then the objects are added. Those have been more or less organized according to their colour and material: elastic, thread, wooden boxes that fit together. I don’t use the objects in a conventional manner, but focus on their associative power. Their significance follows from their interrelationship. I knead the lino and little by little a connection with my chosen theme manifests itself.
I get rid of anything that’s too easily interpreted and therefore downgrades the image, and of anything I find too pretty or aesthetic. But the opposite also happens, when I retain what is beautiful or significant. I constantly create snares and pitfalls for myself.
And then I decide to tilt the image – and everything falls into place.
Gravity is losing ground, which creates space. Space between levels of significance, carrying memories of chaos and pain, which ultimately, in the course of the working process, become universal.
This is also the moment that the image becomes independent.'