A Moment After 2

It is probably 2 PM in the afternoon:
my watch stopped an hour earlier.
‘Who let the dogs out?’ escapes flatly
from daVincky’s open Chinese laptop
impersonating a drive-in cinema
on top of the concierge’s red painted window sill.
The roaring Metro-Goldwyn lion is replaced by
a Polish domestic scene grinning down on me
sitting on the first step up towards B Floor.
Between cold coffee and blurred photos
black latex looking plastic bags accumulate
in the seemingly adult world lit lobby,
the sparse sparkle of rotating disco ball
bouncing off the linen bags’ black sheen.
Cobalt blue skull in whimsical confines
within an ingeniously crafted aquariovision
anchors the news sprawled on all tabloids
of the greatest deceit discovered up third Avenue
in the not too far from here located lipstick tower.
A relative fortune tumbles through my fingers
counted in quarters and a single dime.
Essential baked aromas packaged in molecules
seep up through timeless fissures from below.
Yet the bottom line of the sum in my hand
doesn’t allow the pursuit of freshly baked pizza.
Focusing my craving’s entirety through one gap
in the stairwell’s chunky wooden balustrade,
I see clearly although blurred along the edges
a Polish persistence rooted deeply within Teutonic strength
delicately glazing a giant sparrow’s resting wing
escaped in its singularity from Diza’s golden cage
and the urban expressionistically graffitied C Floor.
The dogs have gone up the Bronx tagging territories
and the momentarily left behind silence is broken
by Robert Cray’s warning, ‘Baby, I am just a looser!’


***


A moment of belonging


There are emotions bottled deep within one’s heart,
essences of a million tears and too little precious laughter,
which make me begin this poem with trepidation
encouraged by a glass of Seven Deadly Zins
in a space filled with childhood yearnings.

To many of you it mightn’t be much and might be banal,
but for this little boy in an old man’s coat that room full to the hilt
with other people’s memories and artificial but colorful anecdotes
is and was just simply heaven; my usual intolerance to tourist’s kitsch
is replaced with a laissez fair friendship and profound love.

Aware of the one sidedness of my emotions,
the cynical bloke in me doesn’t care too much about equilibrium,
but simply rejoices in every moment with the folk of the place
who have given him for the first time in his long lonesome life
a simple nickname that wasn’t negative in its connotation.

I was and still am Mr. Dot of 14D, … also known as de Angelo
and those two names hang proudly from my old man’s shoulders
like the cape of Superman, which hangs above me just to my left side
in the Insane Asylum’s bridge of command that has been
eclectically constructed from the dust of a thousand adventurers.

The bouquet of the Seven Deadly Zins is profound and
quakes my body into a pleasant shudder while my palate harvests with gusto
each of the seven different Zinfardels, … from one grape to the next,
such variety mimicked on a dull wooden board, keys of all color and sizes
hanging in alphabetical and mathematical order from 2A to 15D.

There is a shrine behind me worshipping the Impossible but so too
a commercial Christ, a screaming red lipped Billie Holliday and a plastic sphinx
worn and rubbed smooth, with an iconic Madonna on beeswax behind its tail,
while two cartons of extra crusty pizzas have their lid open,
impersonating giant clams with surreal accuracy.

I turn towards the voice that seeps through thick Plexiglas
separating the Asylum from the Sane, and momentarily my face reflects
in the badly scratched plastic window and gets layered with the face
on the other side that looks in, enquiring with Nordic tone,
if she could have a room and if she could choose one to her liking.

‘I am just a guest’, I hear myself say and shrug my shoulders,
‘He just went down to get another bottle, just around the corner,
… he won’t be long,’ my voice squeezed through the window’s speaker holes,
and I gesture with my free hand to come in into the hotel’s inner sanctum,
known to all of us as ‘Insanity!’


***


American Dream

America is a dream born into
the slavery of hope,
its essence rooted in fundamentally fertile soil
fenced in by the power of ‘Have’,
without regard to those who ‘Have Not!’


***


(01/23-03/20/2009)

How does one begin a love poem
when the object of admiration is a Hobohemian flophouse
in the slow gentrified Bowery of New York,
tucked away between architectural modernism
which tries to kill passing pedestrians during snowstorms,
and Mikes due Pizza, run by a cantankerous but loveable Sicilian
who sells his grandmother’s secret recipes for small change
to fortune-seeking students.

Do I dare to start this little ode with rolls of hand woven Costa Rican tissue paper,
or do I flaunt names like Jarmush or, God forbid, Frederico around?
And if that wouldn’t be enough I too could wake anybody’s interest by mentioning Kerouac and a famous novel.…..
but although there is a little bit of Waits and Tennessee within its walls, I have decided that I will simply start with Charlie the cat.

Charlie isn’t beautiful, nor is he young or charming, he is just a cat,
finding contentment within five floors, fifty-four rooms and a bistro setting on A floor overlooking third Avenue.
He accepts his un-voluntary mascot status reluctantly, barely tolerating Norwegian chain smokers, Austrian storytellers and Finnish ‘Absolut’ drinkers, who frequently hibernate in arty-farty rooms for weeks on end,
only to appear dressed confusingly in Scot’s kilts to march with Celtic pride and matching harmonies down 5th Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day.

His feline Realm reigns unopposed from Transsexual renditions of romanticism to Hugo’s Tangolesque masculinity in 2A, ending in regular intervals on a damascene armchair in 1A, which bears witness to the claws’ sharpness within the shredded threads of suffering silk.
Those of you who aren’t fluent in Latin, the coat of arms indicates with Anglo-Saxon pompousness that there aren’t any chocolates on pillows, and those things in similar color found on occasions around the place are just feline mementos.

Why does one like something? What makes one fall in love?
It certainly wasn’t comfort nor sanity, as I had nightmares featuring virtual armies of bloodsucking bedbugs and copious pissing patrons leaning against walls, shouting from below Fitzgerald’s, and across the avenue out of The Hairy Monk’s open windows; Gothamesque frivolities which broke every urban frequency law were no match for the complementary Air Tahiti Nui ear plugs, which failed miserably.

Yes, I have to mention that my love affair isn’t without self-interest,
as I am one of those who have stamped their design onto the crumbling walls, mosaic of plaster-soaked unwashed secondhand towels lovingly smoothed into place by a lanky mysterious Italian Red Wine drinking Pom, exuding his air of cool, together with a Gibson abusing You-Tube addicted Brummie, whose electrical skills are slightly do-it-yourself, and guests are advised to learn the in and outs of the New York electricity grid.

It’s the whole that makes for such an unforgettable place;
The people, the zoological menagerie, the insane asylum, the weekly mess, PGTips-Tea and Alphonse’s slightly weird fixations;
John’s constant internet search and Chino’s sincere Puerto Rican
generosity, daVincky’s pure unpolluted Polish Charlatanism and Diego’s love for Uruguayan chanson and soccer, Ron’s unbelievable sleeping habits and Mozzarella addiction and who could ever forget a conversation with Masuda, the man, who invented the dictionary of miscommunication.

To put all those things into a single sentence I need to write an epic without full stop or a jingoistic jingle, and I have decided to do neither and just say simply with all my heart: ‘I love you, Artbreakhotel !’


***


Friendship

Overlooking the weekly bustling market on Union Square
a clock busily subtracts heartbeats from eternity soon reaching 5 PM
and Virgin’s enormous fluorescent Red brightens with the falling dusk
luring naiveté towards its storey-high ready armed fashion trap
were Cesaria laments in Portuguese about the vastness of oceans
and Gouldian sighs in Jarrett’s virtuoso reminisce a long forgotten Köln.

Across franchised capitalism private enterprises in stalls and vans
sell with intensity the day’s leftovers from harvests across states
and the caramel nutty smell of fresh baked bread has evaporated into winter air,
while I wait to cross Park in front of North bound city slickers in yellow cabs
to meet people dear to my heart, selling across from me Art in little boxes
containing angst and frustration whimsically powerful within their banal spaces.

Laden with D’Agostino’s cosmopolitan culinary ingredients,
two bottles of full bodied Tempranillo and still crusty baguettes tucked under arm
I arrive in time to see the last box being stored into a translucent plastic crate
which then gets fastened onto a giant sized toddler’s trailer
and dream sellers’ cheeks reddened by icy Winter’s breath
are ready to go home and leave the hustle-bustle behind warm private doors.

I met Miriam and Tony two years before at the same exact spot,
when I bought photographic nudity in silver pendant to hang around my neck,
and a friendship got struck into the invisible metal of inexplicable human affinity;
sharing on most Saturdays now their table and with it, their love for me,
expressed with laughter, tears and generosity beyond well cooked French meals
or silly existential thoughts in the pitfalls of Pat’s wine selection.

With Miriam and Tony comes Pat, a gentle giant from Washington,
harboring in his Sequoianesque Heart a cinematographic dream of stage and film,
debuting in ‘The Warm Light Of The Sun’, a Twilight Production, that had been
condemned from the first click of the clapboard never to see the light of day,
a setback he savored in long humoresque soliloquies in between surreal choices
of too young Chilean Malbecs or too old Tuscan Chiantis.

Seen from someone else’s perspective, maybe sitting on a cast iron railing
or retaining wall watching exhibitionists’ expressions of young and old
in a space encircled by stalls, vans and other people enjoying simply life,
our procession must look like the mythical march of the Wilder Beasts
crossing the Serengeti, as we cross from the East to the West of Union Square:
Tony in front - pulling the cart, I in the middle, cool and collected,
while Miriam keeps up with us mimicking in Zen the waddle of Eskimos.

Our destination is 15th Street across 5th Avenue on the corner of 6th,
an ugly apartment block called appropriately for Tony’s French Parisian roots ‘Left Bank’,
and each time I push the swinging glass doors open I think of Sartre and Camus,
while images of Croissants, bowls of coffee and ‘Liberation’ attach themselves
in my imagination like octopuses onto my mood, and once I step out of the lift
I am ready for Tony’s Michelin creations, and ready to receive their precious gift.



***



Guest from 15B

Just once I looked into her steel blue eyes
and saw the simple wish to belong,
… somewhere, anywhere, …
where ever that might be,
simply to be able to stay within the walls of cool
held up by ghosts of saints and gallons of paint.

Where was the love or warmth of family,
when she came that mid-February night,
swept up the stairs by wind like dry tumbleweed,
the icy breath of winter flushing her cheeks
as she reached with hope for the set of keys
from a concierge’s mozzarella smelling hand.

Fifteen B was home for now, a courtyard view
two floors above card-board squat,
the brief joy of belonging somewhere daily
interrupted by the certainty in man’s laws
guaranteeing expulsion within twenty eight days
of grasping that set of keys.

What was her name? Who knew her story?
We all guiltily saw her plight simply as Life in the Apple,
knowing her only as the guest from fifteen B,
in need of two daily quarters to push into a communication slot,
and yes, I too ‘mea culpa’,
was one of those who found her somewhat odd
and kept perceptively under lock and key my so called humanity.



***

Many Dreamings Ago

How often that laughter embraced so our hearts
and distances were butterflies drifting with the wind
across the sun burnt land.
We drank the love of our fathers and mothers,
as if it were the cool sap of the Boab tree,
and enjoyed the sweetness of childhood
many Dreamings ago.


***



M . . . . r

When Scorpio metamorphosed into Sagittarius
and hoar frost sat elf like on Autumn roses,
my first scream welcomed life with trepidation
as I burst forth from an open mother’s womb.

Steam rose from wrinkled skin
while hands of little love
bundled yearnings in tightly wrapped cloth
and hunger placed onto full rounded breasts
drew from swollen teats more blood than wholesome milk.

With every drop of pain through bitter sweet food
my mother wilted with each ordeal
pushing me into childhood bare of love
that I longed for so incessantly,
as dry soil longs for breaking rain.

While many rivers gushed since then their lengths into oceans
and the trickle of emotions turned into floods much later,
my longings dried up with time into simple dust and
loneliness just turned my heart into stone.



***


Madison Square Garden

Sitting on an uncomfortable city bench in a park
wedged in squarely by Fifth and Madison Avenue,
I smell fragrant Cuban smoke drifting across crisscrossing paths
and watch squirrels busily collecting paper scraps for later comfort as
Hobohemian chess players duel for silvery change lubricated minds.

Trolley-mounted an upright piano with downpour-soaked veneer
gets pushed by a dude in front of a dry fountain,
a big yellow bucket is placed into view by assistant hands
to catch nickels and dimes, quarters and spare greenbacks,
for free rendered rags, rhapsodies and jazz, … rarely requested.

A queue of Pythonesque length meanders twice daily through the park,
its snaking belly holding city slickers who wait their turn for hip overpriced snacks,
while those already served search in rows of occupied benches
for privacy to eat, text and chat via mobile phone to friends and family and
those already digesting fold neatly their refuse into simple plastic origami.

Dogs of all kinds lead all kinds of owners from invisible landmarks to the next to Morse their presence in urine yellow or read with canine intensity
the odor laden headlines splashed across anything remarkable,
posts, trunks, chopsticks, wind-swept takeaway coffee cups, or by chance
rolled up posters advertising the upcoming premiere of Sex in the City.

The guy with the fragrant Cuban cigar places his Haitian frame next to mine,
telling me out of the blue an Epic that spanned from total misery around the hills of Port-au-Prince to the cinematographic cliché of ‘The American Dream’, earned through hard labor and a healthy dose of resilient self-preservation.

The lengthening shadow of the wedge-shaped Flatiron steals my sun,
flocks of office suits rush in punctuated waves towards 23rd Street station,
the Haitian throws the inhaled Cuban towards the dry fountain,
landing just short, missing by that much the big yellow bucket,
while Gershwin dances rag on well worn ivory, … a bit loose and slight off key.


***

My Soles of Comfort

My soles of comfort
feel the flood of tears
soaked into the road
of no return.

My feet stride full of hope
towards the calling in my chest,
that fell silent an eternity ago,
but woke when you glanced
towards my soul, lost.

The clock ticks in past tense,
never can I overtake life as it is
laid out in front of me,
along an incessant path
that begins with a scream and ends in uncertainty.



***



The Big Apple

At first glance the Apple, although big,
looks more like a well-chewed, spit-out core
lying in the gutter of decay.

Cinematographic perspectives on plasma screens
reveal themselves as Hollywood inspired dreamscapes
far from pothole pitted sewer reeking vistas.

Icons once climbed by apes and movie stars
are much less impressive viewed live
than in popcorn flavored imaginations.

The leading edge of importance got blunted
long before lunatics flew sanity into symbolism,
its echo still reverberating from Penn to Central Station.

Striding through Central Park one can’t escape the cliché
forced upon us by its wealth centered neighbors,
beginning and ending with refined Jewish parody.

Once disappointment subsides from expectations
and streets are walked with eyes blind of superficiality,
the new Gotham grows on occasions into the mythical State.

Disagreeable smells disappear into the ethnic cacophonies
of stampeding yellow cabs and anarchic pedestrians
making the rush within its geometric grid an Odyssey.

The flash of a flasher or the onion rich smell of gyros on corners
of South North running Avenues and East West crossing Streets
feel like Mission Impossible within the rigging of quotidian scenes.

Conversations drifting on whirling currents in between canyons
are laden by neo American naiveté or deep existentialism born
on pragmatic leather couches and whimsical do-it-yourself self-analysis.

Mute isn’t a setting in Manhattan’s reach in-between two rivers,
nor can one escape within its boundary the rude aloofness
that typifies each tourists encounter with the native New Yorker.

New Y

Madames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen, Meine Damen und Herren, "Bienvenue, Welcome, Herzlich Willkommen" to Charlatan Ink's Inaugural book launch.

Charlatan Ink has great pleasure to announce the release of its first publication "Postage for Republics of Dreams" a Bonsai-sized Coffee Table Book for Adults by Andre van der Kerkhoff. Born out of the whimsical childishness of two artists shedding the confines of 'The Importance of Art', Charlatan Ink is the brainchild of the NY Charlatan Darek Solarski and the Austro-Australian Charlatan Andre van der Kerkhoff.

"Postage for Republics of Dreams" is an Adult version of a Children's Book laced with 'Germanic Accented' English poetic prose and Polish influenced esthetics. It is a publication to be taken with a grain of salt, however one should be quite careful not to over-salt the experience. Charlatan Ink hopes that you will have as much fun reading the book, as we had in creating this 'Unique Piece of Charlatanistic Folly!'

The Official Launch of the book will take place on the 6th of October at Jadite Galleries in Manhattan during an exhibition opening in which Andre van der Kerkhoff will show his latest photographic works on brushed aluminum. Due to the philatelic nature of the show's subject people are advised to bring with them Loop and Tweezers and a few original stamps to exchange!

"Postage for Republics of Dreams"
October 6-31, 2009
Opening Reception
Tuesday, October 6, from 6-8PM
Jadite Galleries
413 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10019

'Where Dragonflies Tango' Exhibition by Andre van der Kerkhoff @ Carport Cafe Gallery, 3 Pickwick Street, Cannon Hill

Andre van der Kerkhoff can rightly be described as an agent of change. Short of taking up residence on another planet, he has changed just about everything one person can: his name (from Heinz Krautberger); his country (from his native Austria to his present home in Australia); his professions: (from graphic artist/set designer to bonsai cultivator; from writer/poet to photographer to painter); and from styles to subject matter. He is nothing, if not versatile. He is also a self- taught artist—no thanks to a dismissive and disapproving father. He had his first “real” exhibition at age 14. Clearly, he was not one to follow the beaten path, and he still doesn’t. “I always have rebelled against norms, and I was easily bored by uninspired teaching formulas,” he says. ”I think I have always created work that is my own, containing references interpreted by my search for something new.”
This man on the move with a chameleon-like life is endowed with a porous personality able to absorb, adapt and recreate the world around him, sharply observed and keenly felt. His poetic/prose/photographic portrayals of New York City, during which he roomed at the Carlton Arms, a hotel located in the city’s then grungy, un-gentrified Lower East Side, is a case in point. (It still exists, now adorned by van der Kerkhoff’s murals.) It is also where he launched into taking a big bite out of the Big Apple.
His camera depicted the city without a glimmer of glitz or glamour. Van der Kerkhoff is fresh out of city slickers, debutante damsels or Chanel-clad courtesans of the upper crust. It is dressed down to the nitty-gritty of its streets and its darker denizens, unvarnished portraits populated by the fringes of a society from which we often avert our gaze. His moon shone on the misbegotten, the wayward and the woebegone, the forlorn and the godforsaken. If there is a cutting edge of veracity, it is not without compassion illuminated by a silvery sheen.
His photographic works are streetwise, peopled by the likes of pin-ups and prostitutes, flashers and fast- moving passers-by, seemingly insensate and oblivious to the surreal of the city, the solitary figure, and the erotically charged–from bimbos to buildings, from femmes fatales to faceted façades–a devastating picture of the stricken post-September 11th city in a striking social commentary.
Don’t just look, he told us, see. He is still telling us that.
His surroundings permeate him as readily as rain beneath his peripatetic feet. His latest move to Australia, where he has resided since 1986, has spawned his latest permutation after a ten-year hiatus during which he cultivated bonsai trees. “Sometimes,” he says, “one needs time out...the art of bonsai is a great occupation to find peace and ideas for an artistic renewal. I am a funny man. I can’t do two things at
once: when I write, I can’t paint; when I paint, I don’t bonsai; when I bonsai, I don’t write.”
He returned to art with an astonishing vigor; 95 paintings created in seven months is no small feat. “I just painted and painted and painted until my studio was full to the breaking point.” Ranging in sizes from 24”x24” to 70”x70, they often layer mixed media on Belgian linen–oil, acrylic, inks and enamel—sometimes up to seven options on the same canvas.
Enter aboriginal art, stage right. Despite not exploring it and having had only a minimal contact via art galleries or art magazines, as he professes, it must have left an impression upon him, however subconsciously or unintentional. “When I did this series, ‘Where Dragonflies Tango,’ I didn’t set out to produce anything aboriginal.... I do my art,” he explains, “and unconsciously it contains a spiritual language that is visually linked to the Indigenous Interpretation of this Continent’s Landscape. Aboriginal people might feel a connection within my visual expression, but would not call it Aboriginal painting.... It isn’t traditional or native art!”
That said, aboriginal art does appear to be a fertile ground upon which van der Kerkhoff has sown his cerebral seed, weaving a tapestry all his own—a homage of sorts–an echo of a culture not his, but now internalized.
The dragonfly and the butterfly are among the myriad of shapes that conjure up insects, turtles, lizards and snakes, flight paths and trajectories; floral-type patterns recall the woven mille-feuilles backgrounds of medieval wall hangings; circles string coiled pearls in a nebula of another universe.
There is a mystery encased in these images–a hidden tale told in still another poetic language tinted by other landscapes. Landscapes he has made uniquely his own, rendered in earth tones, a “palette [that] reflects the pigments of the Australian Continent,” he writes.
A quasi-musicality and a rhythm inhabit these latest works, a near- repetitive refrain, somewhat reminiscent of some “outsider art.” But van der Kerkhoff is no outsider. His is a reconstruction of an Australian fabric emanating from a melody within, heard by a stranger in a strange land.
He is a stranger no longer.
“It would be rather strange,” he states, “to live in one of Earth’s oldest landscapes and not be interested in it and its unexplainable power and magic. There is a culture present, which has understood this landscape for thousands of years and become one of the most remarkable interpreters of it.... For me landscape is life, and I try to find a compromise between the two different landscapes which have so far dominated my life.” In so doing, he has enriched and embellished our own
landscapes, with a perspective that we had not suspected, through a window we did not know was there.
Like many who wrote about him, the word “dream” is one that recurs, even when he describes himself—a wanderer with “half a globe between dreams.” Dreams are the seams, it would seem—beautiful veins on the leaves of a life well lived, tracing the artist, resurrected and reinvented.
A man of many voices, he has created a magical mosaic–an inner territory crafted from multiple far-flung “landscapes” where we wander and where we, too, are drawn to dream.
For someone adverse to the all-but-sacrosanct Artist’s Statement, Andre van der Kerkhoff is nonetheless outspoken. His art is his statement. For once, words, other than his own, seem almost superfluous.
He may be half a globe away from some of us, but Art, thank God, knows no distance.

DIANE ROOT
Art critic of The New York Times, July 2017, NYC, NY

Certain parallels can be drawn between the German-born photographer Juergen Teller and the Austrian-born artist Andre van der Kerkhoff, who was known as Heinz Krautberger before taking his present pseudonym in 1974. Both choose to live and work outside their own countries, Teller in London, England, van der Kerkhoff in Brisbane, Australia. Both have commercial backgrounds, Teller in fashion photography, van der Kerkhoff in graphic design. Both, like Andy Warhol, who was a successful illustrator before turning to fine art, apply their commercial experience auspiciously to the work that they show in galleries. But, above all, both have garnered attention verging on notoriety for work that can seem transgressive at a time when what art historians refer to as ³The Male Gaze² has fallen out of favor with those cultural tastemakers who lobby for political correctness in the area of sexuality. Claiming that most fashion photography has been shaped by a gay male sensibility, Teller has transgressed by deliberately photographing female models from a heterosexual male perspective (which is to say with a raw, sometimes sloppy sensuality) and carrying that tendency over into his gallery work as well. And Van der Kerkhoff has transgressed by defiantly perpetuating the Male Gaze with a vengeance in the frankly erotic photo-derived images of pinup-like female nudes printed on brushed aluminum that he first exhibited in New York in 2007. Even mitigated by strategically placed geometric color areas that, as I observed in a review at that time, create a ³tantalizing tension between hot and cool, eroticism and formalism,² these images have the power to outrage some viewers by virtue of appearing frankly prurient, and even idolatrous, rather than ironic in the manner of Pop art. As Teller said of his own work in a profile in New York magazine, ³frankly, it¹s girls you want to fuck.²

   Having each in his own manner graphically made the point that individual heterosexual male artists should be as free to express their own preferences as, say, David Hockney or Robert Mapplethorpe, without being penalized for the one-sidedness of art historical precedent or persecuted by the forces of political correctness, both Teller and van der Kerkhoff  have moved on, the former to a series of autobiographical German scenes and autoportraits, the latter to the gritty urban images featured in his new solo exhibition ³Gotham City Blues,² at Artbreak Gallery, 195 Grand Street, in Brooklyn, from  February 13 to March 14. (Reception: Friday, February 13, 6 to 10pm)

   ³I had not picked up a camera in thirty years before I began the series,² van der Kerkhoff, previously known for the landscape paintings he had exhibited throughout Australia, France, Canada, and the U.S., said in an artist statement issued in connection with his first New York solo show of nudes at Jadite Galleries, his Manhattan art dealer, where he will show in October of this year. And digitally enhanced photography continues to be his medium in the new exhibition at Artbreak Gallery. As with his nudes, the cityscapes are all printed on brushed aluminum plates, which not only gives them the heft and ³objectness² of paintings, but imbues his urban imagery  with an eerily dreamlike quality, since the areas that would normally be white have a silvery phosphorescence.

   Van der Kerkhoff¹s method for creating these pictures is to roam the streets of Manhattan, literally chewing up the scenery, as they say of actors in theater who give a larger-than-life performance and blow everyone else off the stage. (He had some 2500 images to select from for printing after one ³three-day photographic rampage.²) On first visiting the city  in 2006, Kerkhoff found it a place that ³symbolically reeked of a nation¹s decay,² and while he subsequently claims to have fallen in love with this Sodom on the Hudson (he had some 2500 images to select from for printing after one three-day photographic orgy), a sense of ambivalence still permeates his pictures. This comes across not only in the title (³Babylon²) of his picture of tall buildings in the financial district of Lower Manhattan, but also in the anthropomorphic aspect that he imparts to these structures, which is reminiscent of the Moloch metaphor for office towers in Allen Ginsberg¹s ³Howl.² Like the late Beat poet, too, albeit in visual terms, he has an unusual ability to eroticize unlikely things. Indeed, in a catalog essay on some of his earlier urban imagery, I observed that ³van der Kerkhoff¹s eye is clearly an erogenous zone, as capable of imparting sensual qualities to pee-smelling streets, with their kinetic collage of lonely crowds and tattered semiotic wonders, as to the naked bodies of beautiful young women.²
   Given the innate seductiveness of his vision, that still holds true.  But I now also perceive an element of S&M in his love affair with a city where, in his picture, ³Gotham City Nocturne,² the sinisterly made-up face of the star-crossed young actor Heath Ledger, in his last role as ³The Joker² in Batman, decomposes spookily into the clouds above the  silhouetted skyline. The Joker¹s face also appears superimposed at billboard-scale over the facades of the midtown buildings near Macy¹s in another print called ³The Power of Hollywood.² Frowning down on the traffic-choked avenue, here the late actor¹s visage seems to symbolize not only the power of filmic fantasy to blot out pedestrian reality, but also its destructive influence on some of those it briefly exalts.
   Then again, only in a city as lawlessly various as New York can reality hold its own so handsomely against fantasy by producing a cast of characters who prove that truth can indeed surpass fiction. Perhaps as evidence of this, van der Kerkhoff submits ³Eccentric Spartan Extravagance,² an image of a gaunt-faced citizen sporting dark glasses and a long plume in his tophat whose everyday street persona is as striking as that of any of Batman¹s arch rivals.  

   Van der Kerkhoff obviously has a gift, rare in a non-native, of focusing in on the incongruous yet telling juxtapositions that make the city a veritable font of found surrealism. One example is his picture of a homeless soul slumbering on a discarded mattress next to an abandoned supermarket delivery cart decorated by the ubiquitous street artist known as De La Vega with his usual Keith Haring-like and the ironically inspirational graffiti slogan for which the image is named: ³Become Your Dream.²  
   When the irony is not inherent in the subject itself, van der Kerkhoff pinpoints it conceptually with a title such as ³Marlboro Man² for an image of an elderly geezer puffing away on a cigarette as he leans out a tenement window above a smaller structure festooned with floral designs and the phrase ³inner Peace...² In fact, found phrases within some of his pictures constitute a kind of concrete poetry that can often seem more apropos than their actual titles. For example, the title ³In Search for Sponsorship² is amusing enough for his image of a totally nude flasher pulling a blanket draped over his shoulders away from his body to reveal an erection. But the word ³Unisex² on the shop awning above the man¹s head seems even more apt, given his mincing pose and the almost feminine voluptuousness of his flabby physique, which could suggest a horny hermaphrodite. A woman entering the shop as he exits merely glances slightly askance, as though a naked man in the streets of New York is no big deal, nothing to get alarmed about.

   Van der Kerkhoff takes such aberrations in stride as well­­ even creates them in some cases through digital means by distorting the image or illuminating some areas in an otherwise monochromatic print with areas of glowing color. For he, too, becomes his dream, as though the island of Manhattan sets loose in him some inner demon that is insatiable to devour its every detail, from the teeming thoroughfares of Chinatown ­­ where the graffiti scrawled across the sides of the tenements engages in a funky dialogue with the elegant ideograms on the shop fronts and awnings below ­­ to the almost empty side-streets around The Brooklyn Bridge, where squat landmarks of crumbling brick are linked from above by Hart Crane¹s ³choiring strings² of steel.  
   That Andre van der Kerkhoff finds lyrical beauty, as well as gaud and grunge, in the urban scene should surprise no one who has been following his work from the beginning. For to appreciate a landscape, or the terrain of a woman¹s body, or the streets of a city, are all facets of beauty unadorned, are all aspects of a love never wholly sacred or profane. Like Baudelaire with a camera, van der Kerkhoff  just as easily enters into ³a bath of multitude² as he ³populates his solitude,² finding in each extreme a microcosm for the whole. Every one of his pictures is a journey into the self for both the artist and the viewer.


­­Ed McCormack

Curriculum Vitae

_ 1956 born as Heinz Krautberger in Graz, Austria
_ 1974 took the professional name of Andre van der Kerkhoff
_ 1974 -1986 worked as graphic & fine artist, and stage designer in Austria & France
_ 1986 -1995 emigrated to Australia creating Bonsais in Sydney & Mackay
_ 1996 -2010 lives & works in Brisbane as a fine artist (painting, mixed media, photography )
_ 2009 Founded together with Darek Solarski CHARLATAN INK LLC New York
_ 2010 Creator and Patron of the CHARLATAN INK ART PRIZE for Visual Arts ( Inaugural Prize 2011 / New York )

_ SOLO Exhibitions 1995 to 2017

_ 2017 CarportCafeGallery, Brisbane, QLD, SMART
_ 2016 Artbreakgallery, NYC, USA/
_ 2015 Jadite Galleries, NY, USA/
_ 2014 Jadite Galleries, NY, USA/ Artbreakgallery, NYC, USA/

_ 2012-2013 Recovering from Cancer

_ 2011 Jadite Galleries, NY, USA /
_ 2010 Jadite Galleries, NY, USA / Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne / David Rex-Livingston Art Dealer, Sydney, NSW / Artbreakgallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, USA /
_ 2009 Artbreakgallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, USA / Jadite Galleries, NY, USA / David Rex-Livingston Art Dealer, Sydney, NSW /
_ 2008 Galerie Baguette, Brisbane, QLD / The Rosetta Stone Fine Arts, West Palm Beach, Florida, USA / Galerie Luz, Montreal, Quebec / Jadite Galleries, NY, USA /
_ 2007 Jadite Galleries, NY, USA /
_ 2006 Galerie Luz, Montreal, Quebec / Jadite Galleries, New York, NY, USA / The Rosetta Stone Fine Arts, Florida, USA /
_ 2005 Galeria Aniela Fine Art, Kangaroo Valley, NSW / Manyung Gallery, Mt. Eliza, VIC / Rinaldi Gallery, Melbourne, VIC /
_ 2004 Michel Sourgnes Fine Art, Brisbane, QLD
_ 2003 Michel Sourgnes Fine Art, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 2002 Michel Sourgnes Fine Art, Brisbane, QLD / Goya Galleries, Southbank - Melbourne, VIC / Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW /
_ 2001 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Trevenen House Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Galerie Baguette, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 2000 Michel Sourgnes Fine Art, Brisbane, QLD / Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Freestyle/tout Gallery, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1999 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Galerie Baguette, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1998 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Galerie Baguette, Brisbane, QLD / Bauhaus Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Myer Centre Queen Street Mall, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1997 Bauhaus Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Gilchrist Galleries, Brisbane, QLD / Myer Centre Queen Street Mall, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1996 Bauhaus Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Gilchrist Galleries, Brisbane, QLD / The Upstairs Gallery, Mackay, QLD /
_ 1995 Entertainment Centre, Mackay, QLD /

_ GROUP exhibitions & prizes 1995 to 2011

_ 2011 Artist in Residence ( Ye OLDE CARLTON ARMS HOTEL, New York )
- 2010 Creation of CHARLATAN INK LLC New York /
_ 2010 Artist in Residence ( Ye OLDE CARLTON ARMS HOTEL, New York ) / The Armory Show, New York / The Rosetta Stone Fine Arts, Florida, USA /Florida, USA
_ 2009 Artist in Residence ( YE OLDE CARLTON ARMS HOTEL, New York ) / The Armory Show, New York /
_ 2008 RosettaStone Fine Arts, Florida, USA / David Rex-Livingston Art Dealer, Sydney, NSW / Galerie Baguette, Brisbane, QLD
_ 2007 Invited to participate in the BIENNALE INTERNAZIONALE DE11’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA Firenze, Fortezza da Basso 1 – 9 December 2007 /
_ 2006 The Tighes Hill Gallery, Newcastle, NSW / The Rosetta Stone Fine Arts, Florida, USA / Arta Gallery, Toronto, CAN / The Hart Gallery, Carmel, USA / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD /
_ 2005 The Rosetta Stone Fine Arts, Florida, USA / Rinaldi Gallery, Melbourne, VIC / SAUC Gallery, Sydney, NSW / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD / Moda Rouge, Mount Eliza, VIC / Caelum Gallery, New York, USA /
_ 2004 Finalist ‘CROMWELL’s ART PRIZE 2004 / Jackman Gallery, Melbourne, VIC / Embassy of Australia, Washington DC, USA / The Hart Gallery, Carmel, California, USA / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD / SAUC Gallery, Sydney, NSW /
_ 2003 Goya Galleries, Southbank - Melbourne, VIC / Goya Galleries, La Trobe Street, Melbourne, VIC / Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Armadale, VIC / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD /
_ 2002 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Goya Galleries, Southbank - Melbourne, VIC / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD / Lighthouse Gallery, Noosa, QLD /
_ 2001 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD / Cronulla Gallery, Mount Tamborine, QLD / Mary Place Gallery, Sydney, NSW / Lighthouse Gallery, Noosa, QLD / Hang-Ups Gallery, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 2000 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Fox Galleries, Brisbane, QLD / The Manly Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD /
_ 1999 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / The Artists Gallery Hunters Hill, Sydney, NSW / Fox Galleries, Brisbane, QLD / Gilchrist Galleries, Brisbane, QLD / Hang-Ups Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Art Gallery Collections, Surfers Paradise, QLD / The River Gallery Art Competition, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1998 Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW / Gilchrist Galleries, Brisbane, QLD / The Artists Gallery Hunters Hill, Sydney, NSW / SELECTED ENTRANT & FINALIST TATTERSALL’s CLUB LANDSCAPE ART PRIZE & EXHIBITION, Brisbane, QLD / National Works on Paper Exhibition Mornington Peninsula Gallery, VIC / Cronulla Gallery, Mount Tamborine, QLD /
_ 1997 Bauhaus Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Universal Language ( Gilchrist Galleries & Fire Works Gallery ) Brisbane, QLD / Conrad Jupiters Art Prize Exhibition, Gold Coast, QLD / Cronulla Gallery, Mount Tamborine, QLD / Cintra Galleries, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1996 Bauhaus Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD / Gilchrist Galleries, Brisbane, QLD /
_ 1995 Bauhaus Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD /

Exhibitions prior to Australian Residency 1974 – 1986

1986 Triest Townhall, Triest, Italy /
1985 Foyer of the Steiermärkische Sparkasse, Graz, AUT /
1983 Galerie Alain-Fournier, Albi, France /
1982 Centre Cultural, Toulouse, France /
1981 Galerie Café Pont-Neuf, Toulouse, France /
1979 Galerie St. Cyprien, Toulouse, France /
1978 Schloß Seckau, Seckau, Austria / Schloß Herberstein, Herberstein, Austria /
1977 Kaffee Galerie Schillerhof, Graz, Austria /
1975 Grazer Künstlerhaus, Graz, Austria /
1974 Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria /


_ Media
_ 2009 ' HOBOHEMIAN FLOPHOUSE: The Carlton Arms Hotel, where each room is a funky art installation and there’s a cat box down at the end of the hall, is New York City’s last low-rent hipster haven by Ed McCormack
_ 2009 ' POSTAGE FOR REPUBLICS OF DREAMS ' by Ed McCormack
_ 2009 ' Andre van der Kerkhoff Enters the ³Bath of Multitude² by Ed McCormack
_ 2008 ‘ METALLIC EDGE ‘ Brisbane News by Phil Brown
_ 2008 ' SEXING THE CITY' Andre van der Kerkhoff Bites 'The Apple' by Ed McCormack
_ 2008 ‘ THE NAKED AND THE SACRED in the Art of Andre van der Kerkhoff ‘ Gallery&Studio Magazine, New York by Ed McCormack
_ 2008 ‘ PASSION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY IN HIS VEINS ‘ Courier Mail by Penny Brand
_ 2008 ‘ FIGURING FEMININITY ‘ Courier Mail by Suzanna Clark
_ 2007 ‘ SEDUCTION & ABSTRACTION ‘ New York Times by Ed McCormack
_ 2005 Australian Art Collector Issue 32 / Australian Art Collector Issue 34 /
_ 2003 Courting Controversy / Brisbane News / Art with Phil Brown - 27/08/2003
_ 2002 ‘ ABC ‘ “ Sunday Afternoon “ / Australian Art Collector Issue 21
_ 2001 Brisbane News / metro with Trent Dalton, November 2001
_ 2000 Brisbane News / culture vulture with Darren Nicol, April 2000
_ 1999 Brisbane News / culture vulture with Alicia Pyke, November 1999 / Radio 4RBH : Interview with Brenda Gale / Sydney’s Eastern Suburb Radio Station: Profile of an artist / Australian Art Collector Issue 9 / Art & Australia Vol. 36 No. 4 /
_ 1998 Brisbane News / city beat with Alica Pyke, May 1998 / Interview on Stateline, ABC Queensland (16/10/1998) /
_ 1997 Art & Australia Vol 35 No. 2 / Brisbane News / city beat with Alicia Pyke, October 1997 / Brisbane News / ArtBeat with Phil Brown, November 1997 / Courier Mail – Bits and Pieces /
_ 1996 Brisbane City News / Out of Hours: ART
_ 1995 Channel 7 Mackay: Interview with Stan Goddard, December 1995 / The Daily Mercury, November 29 / Pioneer News, November 29 / The Daily Mercury, December 8