Philip Akkerman (1957), whose works have found their way into the collections of the Stedelijk Museum/Amsterdam and the Hirshhorn Museum/Washington D.C., paints self-portraits and only self-portraits. Since 1981 (the year that ended his studies at the Royal Art Academy in The Hague and with Stanley Brouwn at the Amsterdam Atelier 63) he has painted around one hundred portraits in full-frontal or three-quarters view every single year.
Akkerman’s restriction to his own countenance, to what a look in the mirror reveals to be both familiar and enigmatic, has led to an exploration of painting’s possibilities and references. These portraits, painted in oil on chalk-primed wooden panels, bear witness to his virtuoso flypast through art history. From Rembrandt by way of van Gogh up to the pointillist dissolution of the physiognomy, from Beckmann by way of Picabia up to the psychedelic distortion of facial features – numerous quotations, epochs, techniques and styles can be found. One looks in vain for Akkerman’s own style in the (in the meantime) over two thousand small- to middle-size self-portraits that have grown into a cabinet of curiosities, for the artist refuses to pin himself down to any categorization or signature style. “In my work everything is possible! – today an idealist – tomorrow a formalist – forever: self-portraits!”
In a certain way, Akkerman’s artistic method follows a conceptual plan. By means of the constant replication of his own face, he abstracts from his motif so that his physiognomy becomes a serial backdrop against which a highly varying and extremely productive way of working can be tested. Keeping to a traditional glazing technique and sharing a traditional genre, the portraits can nevertheless not be read in any conventional way.
Head and face are subjected to constant transformation by means of diverse backdrops and (dis)guises, whereby the portraits resist any psychological interpretation and character relevation. They explicate not only the multiple identities of the artist, but of the subject as such. In this way the self-portraits also lay claim to universality: “I paint myself, and so I paint the whole of mankind.” Beyond this they affirm the undisguised and obsessive joy Akkerman has in painting – a medium that has repeatedly been declared dead: “Painting is not reigning anymore, but it is still raining paintings.”
Since what Akkerman paints is his mirror image, the artist gazes out of the picture with a searching look, often also with suggestive penetration. The existential as well as aesthetic question that has driven Akkerman ever and again also becomes an issue with the viewer: “But why then do I paint self-portraits and not trees? I paint what is closest to me (as an uncomprehending individual): my own body, my own head.”

Birgid Uccia

Opening: Friday, 10 March, 2006 from 6 pm to 8 pm. The artist will be present.