Anthony Blokdijk

My work as an artist starts with the rise of punk and squat culture in the late 1970s. Do It Yourself. As a result, the Maldoror Foundation was established in 1987. Active to date and usually in the margins of society. Given my training as a cultural worker, I have often initiated projects with certain groups; general art-loving public, young people in deprived areas, psychiatric patients. In that context I have been publishing music and books and making exhibitions for decades. Due to recent health problems over the past two years I have focused more on my solo work as an artist, i.e. as a maker of paintings. Publishing books and creating exhibitions are still an integral part of my art. Something specific about my paintings, which I started working on from 1985. They fit into the post-war art brut tradition of Dubuffet, Fautrier and Wols. They have only been exhibited a few times (in The Hague (Paard van Torje 1990), Amsterdam (Melkweg 1992), Paramaribo (Paramribo Biennale 2007), Yogyakarta (Museum dan Tah Liat 2012) a.o.) and have rarely been sold. After my trip to 'roots' Indonesia in 2012, I saw that I no longer wanted to make new works, touched by the effects of overproduction. From then on I have only recycled old works. Recycling, archiving are important themes in my work. Within my practice I try to create a layering and continuous dialogue by means of different methods. By, among other things, collecting letters and zines and (re)publishing them. By linking the past and the present, through collaboration with young artists and artists from the past. But also by collaborating with artists who are also stigmatized as mere patients and then archiving their work. The resulting stratification functions as a socially critical narrative in an accessible and sometimes humorous way. An extensive overview of all my activities since 1979 can be found here: http://anthonyblokdijk.blogspot.com/