KANELI&SMIT
COLLABORATIVE ARTISTS
   Together they conquer the landscape of Groningen. Local clay forms the pigment therefore the color of their paintings. The material gives depth and layers to their philosophy on the place, just as the earth of Siena has given color and meaning to the work of Tuscan Masters. Their Groningen landscape is of cosmic nature. Changes in light define the space. This theme is intensified in their later work.

Petri Leijdekkers 2010


EBB & FLOW paintings
Click here to read more about the Ebb and Flow paintings


FLATLAND
The clay soil of the Netherlands and the Wadden Sea is a recurring ingredient in Kaneli&Smit's work. Especially the North of Netherlands (Groningen and Friesland) and the Wadden Sea area, with its specific light and infinite horizon, is an inspiration and an actual collaborator in the synergic work of this duo.


KHÔRA
(On painting together at the same time on the same canvas)

   Indeterminate space bathed in movement.
Every movement inquiring and challenging manipulation and flow towards emergence.

   Using a basic material as mud; a water and clay composite which induces act of painting into a genesis of a hyper-real depth without the amplification of color.

   In working-painting together, a hyper-space evolves marked within the normal space of the canvas as a potential opening with the spacing of deference and difference which two people are, with the deconstruction of either-or logic, letting eventuate and indistinguishably so, uniting and melting together.

   Starting in the middle of nowhere, as most journeys, a place with horizon in all directions which with anticipation becomes "now here".

   Manipulation and at the same time keeping the dynamics of the painting alive is a process that requires utter concentration and a certain doubtlessness. This process in stages can be compared to the disciplined training and focusing of a runner for the Olympics who then performs his best at a single run.

   This manner of painting is the true unfurling of a (land/earth)scape or space in the form of a flow, a stasis, and an imperceptible almost vanishing, manipulated and let within to contain fluidity. Fluctuating evolution of similar tones organized and organizing themselves by accumulation and proliferation, fostering the birth of an extremely organic landscape, visual-imagery-universe with location being an essential parameter but not constraining or bounding .

   The viewer is free to move, free to choose his path among the multitude of visual possibilities, lingering at chosen places, creating his own perceptual universe from what is proposed to him.

Artist statement "Kaneli & Smit"

• The making of WYRED I, II, III


• The making of Ogress in Progress, Fukushima


• Painting on the dike


A Collaboration of Irem Kaneli and Stijn Smit, since 2007 simultaneously working / painting together on the same canvas. Exhibiting as "Kaneli & Smit".