Interview by Kehan Lai

I notice that back in 2010, you included objects such as tape and cables along with abstract shapes you painted on the wall (in Lilac walls forever) to form the picture. What is it that made you exclude those objects in your later practice in search of a purer form of abstraction?

Lilac Walls Forever, 2010 © Femke Dekkers

In my earliest work,I considered those objects as a sort of decoration; I could use tape and cables just like I could use paint (for example to draw a line). I also was, and still am, attracted to those objects because they refer to the work process.Therefore,I started including them in the photos because they were around. In my first work,I didn’t have a studio, so I was looking for places I could go work for a long period of time. Choices were made in the ‘heat of the moment’. My work became more painterly when I had a studio. The installation and the set could grow. The focus was more on: shapes, form, paint etc. But I still had this attraction to materials like thread, scissors, brushes etc, and they do still appear in my work. My work arises from the workplace and I like that element to stay in my work. So the objects appear maybe not as lines or as a decorative part, but are now more sort of ‘witnesses’ laying around.

And can you talk about how your process developed over the years?

I was, as you said, concentrating more on a purer form of abstraction. At some point I was only painting on the walls and the floor. The viewpoint of the camera would bring it altogether.

Now I’m bringing back more objects in the set and I’m working more with layers (literally) by placing constructed element in between the walls and the camera (so more in the set, in the space).

I hope my process will develop in a more dynamic way in the coming years. I want to let go of the one static point of view of the camera and the one static set.

Your photographs remind of me those of Georges Rousse. However, they go beyond the conversation around space and dimensionality because I also see in your photos the relationships between color, form, scale, etc. What’s your interpretation and principle when it comes to abstraction?

The work of Rousse is very good and strong! You don’t need a camera to capture what he makes and sees. When people enter my studio, they sometimes don’t really see or get what I’m making. It looks like a complete mess JThe certainty and boldness of Rousse is attractive and admirable. What’s important for me is the physicality of the work process, of the search. I like to work within my own body range.The outcome and the photos are always a quest of something I didn’t know I was searching for. So every work is an outcome of a process of searching and adjusting. I like to create an environment where things can fall apart and come together. I direct the way things are going, but there’s stillplacesfor chance. And because I want to focus on that feeling of searching the right composition,I don’t want to be bothered with a narrative, an explanation of things, something figurative or referring. I do love to focus pure on form, color, texture, composition etc. I feel more like a painter or sculptor then a photographer.

Turning the corner 1.2 (edition with shadow), 2018 © Femke Dekkers

Can you talk about the problems you encountered in this process and what you did to solve them?

The problem often is: when is a work finished? My work process goes from stage to stage and in between there are moments where I think everything falls together. It’s the moment when I take a photo. I like to work with my analog camera. The moments to make a photo are limited, so I really have to decide before I take one.It feels closer to painting that way. But due to high production costs, I did try out a digital camera for a short while. I could work faster (see results quicker to react in work process…where as when I work with analog, I have to go to a lab to let the color filmsget developed).But I discovered I prefergrainsthan pixels. The softness and the feel of the analog (as an outcome but also as the pace of the process) suit the work better. It also gives me the opportunity to experiment in the darkroom, for example: the use of photopaper in the cassette instead of a negative, a sheetof film.

WCW Questionnaire:

Describe your creative process in one word.

Attempts

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

Probably something to do with looking around and using your senses.

What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

I’m reading about Cezanne at the moment; not only about his life and work,but also what others have written about him. Like Rilke in his book ‘Letters about Cezanne’. Therefore I started reading Letters to a young poet again, where the following part gave me strength and inspiration:

be patient toward all that is unsolved

in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek

the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point

is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,

live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of

shaping and forming as a particularly happy and

pure way of living; train yourself to it—but take

whatever comes with great trust, and if only it

comes out of your own will, out of some need of

your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate

nothing.

What is the most played song in your music library?