Jan Dibbets
Shortest Day at my House in Amsterdam, 1970 | Shadows in the Sperone Gallery, Torino, March 10, 1971 | Flood Tide, 1969-70 | Horizon, 1974 | Stones, 2004 | Ten Windows, 1998 | & more...
AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY is a very simple newsletter where I share a collection of creative expressions I enjoyed coming across.
Based in Amsterdam, Jan Dibbets—a pioneering figure of conceptual art since the 1960s—was among the first artists to challenge the ease of the camera’s status as a documentary tool. He continues to navigate a relationship between the conceptual and the pictorial through the medium of photography, creating images that are abstractions of reality. By using simple photographic processes and subtle variations, by changing the position of the camera or the quality of natural light from image to image, Dibbets establishes a unique register of perception, the subject of which is only a pretext for the transformation that occurs.
Peter Freeman, Inc.
Rather than “what” we see, the works of the artist lead us to ask ‘how’ we see, and it is precisely these fundamental questions that give rise to his work. In dialogue with some of the most salient moments of Western art culture, from Dutch painting to Italian art, and the relating theories on form and perspective, Dibbets’s inquisitive mind knows how to create an innovative, individual course that has contributed in turn to establishing new artistic languages. Among the pioneers of Conceptual Art, and part of the emergence of Land Art as well as Arte Povera, from the late 1960s Dibbets has been one of the very first to single out a use for photography as a “thinking” tool, carrying out a revolution the consequences of which have been further amplified in the present digital age.
Marcella Beccaria, Chief Curator and Curator of Collections at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
I think the great time for photography is still to come. Photography is the medium of the future, believe me. It has yet to develop. It has a very short history and it is in need of ideas, of thinking about what to do with it and how. Not just about what to make. It is such an easy and tricky medium. You can do anything but nobody knows how.
Jan Dibbets
