Kosmos V by Ninet Kaijser

Kaijser's drawings are constructed with tiny lines of coloured pencil, like cross-stitches that grow together into organically, colour-changing planes. Very slowly, a landscape emerges. A rock formation rising out of the water, crevices and holes you could hide in red earth, flat grey stones polished by the water, on which barnacles have attached themselves - glowing white - and surrounding seaweeds in yellow and bright green. Kaijser works intuitively and has the feeling that what appears on paper has always existed.

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In Ninet Kaijser's work, everything seems to be alive, capable of movement; it shimmers, it flows, it drips, it shines, it grows. This organic growth, the accumulation of countless layers, incorporates time into the drawings in a way. As a viewer, too, you have to take the time to get to the bottom of the work, which, in passing, allows you to penetrate another sense of time: time as a duration. The philosopher Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will) imagines time as the rolling of a snowball, in which the individual layers are indistinguishable and continuously blend into each other. They remain present in the experience of this moment.

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The longer you contemplate the work, the deeper you get, until you feel you can almost disappear into it, become part of it. By the sheer size of her XL landscapes, Kaijser's work touches on the sublime, the beauty of overwhelming nature; the uncontrolled, erratic and grand landscapes, where we experience our insignificance. A feeling that moves between safety and desolation and that can be accompanied by a slight shudder and the realisation of our place in the world. This also gives us a certain responsibility: we are merely passers-by.

 

Ninet Kaijser (1970) makes drawings of extraordinary size; 2 x 4 or even 6 m wide. Besides these XL drawings, she also makes XS work - the series Micro and Kosmos. With these unusual dimensions, she generates a new look that manages to escape our usual way of looking.

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After studying mechanical engineering at TU Delft, a teacher training in drawing and mathematics, and a foundation course in art history at VU University in Amsterdam, Kaijser completed her education at the Art Academy, the AKI in Enschede, where she started working more conceptually. Through her prior training, she already had a hold on issues such as visual aspects and craft skills. For example, she experimented with lithography, where before the process the stone is ground. And like mathematics, her drawings are about complexity, analysis and order.

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Landscapes, such as the coastline of Normandy and Norway, are often inspiring the creation of an artwork. Kaijser is mostly fascinated by the overwhelming feeling they create, which can make you feel insignificant as a human being. The micros are often a fairly literal translation of what Kaijser has seen in nature. While drawing, aspects arise that she wants to explore further and transform into large format, virtual landscapes with titles like BAY, TIDE, ROCK, SHORE and COAST (THE LARGER DRAWING).