Ruth van Beek shares her archival collage work during her week as guest editor for our Instagram Takeover, February 2019.
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Ruth van Beek ( Zaandam, 1977 ) lives and works in Koog aan de Zaan, The Netherlands. She studied photography at The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and graduated in 2002.
Ruth van Beek’s work originates in her ever growing archive. The images, mainly from old photo books, are her tools, source material and context.
Van Beek physically intervenes in the pictures. By folding them, cutting them, or adding pieces of painted paper, she rearranges and manipulates the image long enough to reveal the universe that lies within. Contrasting elements engage in conversation: the dead past coming to life; the literal and the abstract; the kind of photography that displays emphatically and her covering it up visibly; the limitations and the endless possibilities of an archive.
Her work was shown worldwide in various solo and group exhibitions. Among others: FOMU (BE), ETAL Gallery, (U.S), The Ravestijn Gallery (NL), Les Rencontres d’Arles (FR), Flowers Gallery (UK) and Fraenkel Gallery (U.S).
Her works have been featured in magazines such as Centerfold Magazine, Foam Magazine, IMA Magazine, The British Journal Of Photography, The Aperture Photobook Review, Financial Times, Elephant Magazine and The New York Times. She has published several artist books, in collaboration with different publishers. In 2017 her book The Cast, was published by New Documents in LA.
In September 2018 the book How to do the flowers came out, an extensive manual book. Hundreds of images and try-outs for collages come together on the pages in unexpected combinations. This book is co-published by Art Paper Editions from Gent (BE) and Dashwood Books from New York (U.S).
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For more of Ruth’s work, visit her website here.
