Artist Profile — Enno de Kroon

The next two artists you’ll meet here at HomeWorkshop.com, transform recycled materials into stellar artwork.

Today, it’s artist Enno de Kroon from The Netherlands, whose Eggcubism is—in a word—brilliant. By painting on the challenging canvas of recycled egg crates, he plays with perspective, and forces the viewers of his artwork to do the same.

In his Rotterdam studio, the humble crates take on personalities of color and motion.

Classroom (above), was inspired by his daughter’s first days at school, and depicts a “loud and messy classroom.” Look closely and you’ll catch a couple students asleep at their desks, and another sneaking in a water-pistol shot.

This—like many of Enno’s Eggcubism pieces—is large-scale. Here is the 80-egg-crate work in its infancy, in Enno’s studio.

And here’s a peek into his Red Light District II:

“The shape of my new canvases – the egg box structures- increases the amount of possible visual images in an almost exponential way,” said Enno.

“Two-and-a-half dimensional paintings,” he calls them. One of the ladies from the right angle view gives you a feel for the impact of Eggcubism in person.

It’s not easy to paint on this canvas, and viewing the recycled art pieces requires interaction.

“Painting with hindrances requires a new approach by the painter, which in turn has led the viewer to have to take a new approach to looking at the art,” said Enno.

“The egg carton works came about out of my previous work where I find the relationship between the viewer and the piece as an object to be of great importance. I’ve always played with distortions of perspective, which puts the viewer on the wrong foot and makes them conscious of their manner of observing.”

“The viewer discovers quickly the presence of an obstacle when looking at these works and finds it necessary to look at it from different sides, and then to decide themselves which position they want to take. Every position suffers the consequence that other parts of the work can’t be seen. The extra effort of this process really offers something new to the art: The process of viewing this art work becomes a purposeful, even interactive and exciting experience where both your expectations and memory play a role.”

Here are the Boatsmen:

Here’s Chinese Man 3, from his China Portrait Series; and I couldn’t resist sharing with you his Kiss, created with a deformed egg box:

Another large-scale work—Mosh!—finished, and with Enno in progress:

Although he mostly portrays humans, Enno has also experimented with still-life. Here are vessels from his Amphora series, in which he questions the waste that we humans discard:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Enno de Kroon’s ideas are endless, and the stacks of egg crates in his studio await his brushes.

You can view more of Enno’s work, and contact him through his Web site, and his Flickr pool.