Corrie de Boer and Semna van Ooy | De Boer & Van Ooy

The drawing is central to Corrie de Boer's oeuvre. She composes lines into circles, often in layered collages of transparent paper. While drawing, she discovers the special shape of the Lingam, which results in a beautiful series of monumental graphite drawings. In an earlier phase of life she is closer to the architecture and minimalism of the 1960s and 1970s and Corrie de Boer develops a special visual language and technique; with needle and thread she "writes" lines in endless series, almost compulsively and with strict repetition and seriality. Not surprisingly, her friendship with Jan Schoonhoven with whom she feels a great kinship.

Later on, she became closely involved in the avant-garde experiments that had caused a great deal of sensation far beyond Groningen's Finsterwolde since her meeting with Albert Waalkens, gentleman farmer and gallery owner from Finsterwolde. Although she never aspires to the role of gallery owner, she decides for decades the choice of artists together with Albert Waalkens and organizes numerous exhibitions, events and jazz concerts. She is not afraid of conflicting themes. Violence in art fascinates her, as with Rubens, but also endears her grandchildren later on. She draws and photographs their feet, making large collages in which layers of transparent paper are superimposed. In the preference for drawing, a comparison with the work of Semna van Ooy arises.

Semna van Ooy looks very good and sharp. She dissects a subject, fillets it and thereby makes it her subject. In her study, for example, the theme of the 'descent from the cross' - depicted over the centuries and by many artists. She studies this theme in the paintings of Rembrandt, Rogier van der Weyden, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Rubens, among others. She compiled this viewing study in the booklet "The depopulation". In it she literally analyzes the technical solutions that artists came up with to depict the theme. In the exhibition at Borzo, Semna van Ooy tackled a new theme: the series of etchings of Goya's "Tauromaquia" (the art of bullfighting). Here, too, she analyzes the scene, analyzes the action and creates a new image. "I see a collage of separate elements. The individual parts are played off against each other in an inimitable composition. Black against white and white against black and all the nuances in between. The volumes collide with numerous hatchings and curved lines. Hollow and convex slide one behind the other, diagonal lances and poles string together the agile tangle. " With the same approach to her subject, Semna van Ooy also makes sculptures. They are three-dimensional collages that are close to the origin of the drawing.

About drawing, looking and analyzing. About understanding and editing. About draft. Like Mother like daughter…

Paul van Rosmalen, Amsterdam October 2013