Hans Wap - Silkscreen ? . Art & Business, share 286.

Hans Wap (Rotterdam, 1943)
Hans Wap lives and works in Rotterdam. `As a child I was driven around in a pram through a city that looked like a jigsaw puzzle (... driven around between randomly thrown pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, here and there a tree, a shed, four-storey high-rise buildings... From: Rotterdam 1944). But because of that, it was also a fantastic playground later on. For a while Amsterdam was more fascinating, I went there on the weekend. But Rotterdam was always inspiring, because it changed under your feet. And now it has also become a nice city.` Wap is sometimes considered one of the new realists, which also included Rutger Kopland, Tom van Deel, Wim T. Schippers, CB Vaandrager, Jules Deelder and Hans Verhagen. Yet there was not much contact between them. That also had to do with the age difference. Wap made his debut in 1967 and was part of the Rotterdam poetry scene with poets such as Jules Deelder and Cornelis Vaandrager. `There used to be a magazine called Gard Sivik here in Rotterdam, but it was mainly made by people who weren't from Rotterdam (including Armando and Sleutelaar). I did hang out with Cornelis Vaandrager and of course with Jules Deelder. Jules and I looked after the city, of the entire group we are the only ones left in Rotterdam.` Wap is a very versatile visual artist who uses various techniques. He makes paintings (often people or objects in landscapes, bridges, buildings, birds), graphics (colourful woodcuts, or black and white linocuts as in the 'Car Dump' series) and pastels, including 'Hebban olla vogola nestas'. And he designs, and has been making sets for the Scapino ballet for years. Wap designed the glass partitions and the upholstery of the new Sprinter of the NS. There are 100 of them running through the Netherlands. A nice assignment.' Birds are a recurring theme, Wap paints them a lot. `I don't know why. But there is something strange about birds. They are a symbol of freedom, and at the same time a large part of them spends their lives in a cage. That is a fascinating phenomenon. I would like to work in a prison, painting birds on walls. There too people are in cages, and people walk around freely.`