Artist statement
I love the vibrancy of paper; of the function it has had as a vegetable bag, test, envelope, shopping bag or wrapping paper. With this material that I come across every day; I stick my canvases. I cherish the volatility of old paper and appreciate it as an expression: it takes on a new shape because of me. For me, paper in my hands means freedom, an endless space full of possibilities. It’s material I experimented with playfully as a toddler. This creates work in which people and their environment are central. Often it is women in uncomfortable situations or attitudes, who look lost and dreamily into the world at an unwatched moment. I make the uncertainties and vulnerability of man visible. Due to the layering of the paper, you get into the skin of the subject. In the interiors I make you can still see the traces that people have left behind, a glass on the table, a book on the floor. They are out of the picture themselves. They are abandoned spaces. Rooms and kitchens where it look like someone else was present.
BIO
Astrid Vlasman is a visual artist and lives and works in Leiden, the Netherlands. She studied at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. For years she has been working on large collages with used paper and mixed media. In recent years she has regularly worked as an artist in residence abroad. She also exhibits there. Last year she won the New Collection Prize through Malamegi in Venice. Furthermore, she has won the audience award at the «limits of freedom» exhibition in Leiden. Interviews have also been published in newspapers and a column by her about her work and travels in an artists’ magazine. Her work has been included in several private collections. In recent years she has exhibited her work in the west of the Netherlands. She also had exhibitions in Hungary, Belgrade and Venice last year.
