Artist from Utrecht, The Netherlands. Main discipline is painting.

*** Artist Statement ***


Back of the cultural landscape

On average I manage to complete twelve paintings a year. They mainly show architectural themes. The images
that I use are found in my daily life. Cycling from my home to the studio have been and are of great importance.
In the vicinity of closed factories, construction sites and overgrown junkyards you can see that the difference
between thriving industry and, after time, the last vestiges are not so great. Almost everything is still there - it's just
abandoned, discarded, obsolete. In short it is my intention to portray the back of the cultural landscape, which
should result in universal images. I will not just make statements on impermanence or criticize consumer society. First
of all I want to show what remains after human presence and activity have ceased. Everything that exists has
once been non existent and will without a doubt in the future cease to exist, even though there is a phase in
anything we can create or think of may seem beautiful and timeless. My interest starts when that phase is over and
something else begins to emerge. I paint, metaphorically speaking, weeds rather than flowers.
Or, as was clearly expressed in an article to accompany the exhibition City and Industry in 2004: "Dennis Teunissen
registers with ruthless clarity the surprising beauty of the remains of human economic activity: a continual building
up followed by decay, with only dented cars and rusty coal wagons as silent, abandoned witnesses."(Femke Zijp in
Nova Terrra magazine).

Dennis Teunissen 2012 … Read More