The exhibition ‘Ecosystems: Revival and Death’ at Art Centre Schiedam explored the resilience of ecosystems. When these systems are overloaded, they collapse and transition into another, less complex system. This causes serious damage to nature and also has consequences for humans.
Nikolaj Dielemans, one of the exhibition’s initiators and participants, provided further information about the exhibition and his work. His past as an urban planner/designer is reflected in several paintings. We see a landscape from above, in various shades of green, brown, red dots, and dark blue waters intersecting with it, along with a few other landscapes that are more in-depth.
Ecological Main Structure
Dielemans: “In the work ‘Ecological Main Structure’, I depicted ecological zones in an imaginary landscape. Within these zones, animal life can move from one habitat to another. A deer, for example, serves as an indicator; the animal can walk, but also swim.”
All sorts of branches and connections are visible, as well as intersections. “These are very important, because if you destroy these intersections, the ecological network becomes more fragile.” He has indicated the threats in the zone with red dots. The work is constructed with various layers of paint, sand, and charcoal.
In ‘The Decline of a Glacier’, you see the glacier retreating. The beautiful white on the right becomes muddy and wet. Further on, you can see the mountain’s rock layers. Various layers of paint, charcoal, and sand depict the glacier’s demise.
Plastic Soup
In another work, you look inside an ocean and see, besides a few fish and marine flora, the ‘plastic soup’ and, below, a damaged seabed. “This plastic soup in the Pacific Ocean covers an area the size of France, Spain, and Portugal combined. Trawling is harmful to the seabed and can have serious consequences. So is deep-sea mining, which involves metals and minerals such as manganese, nickel, and cobalt. This too is harmful to seabed life.” In yet another work, you see the ice disappearing. “Icebergs are crumbling, which causes climate change. All sorts of new routes across the Arctic are also opening up.”
And there’s a work on eco-spores. “Mushrooms have a whole underground network (eco-spores) through their mycelium. This also applies to trees, which transmit messages to each other through their roots.”
Layering, Composition, Meanings
Dielemans is always searching for layering, composition, and meaning, he says. “I regularly visit Documenta in Kassel. In 2017, the theme was ‘refugee.’ It addressed everything that refugees experience. In the main hall, you could see a sloop hanging upside down that had sunk in the Mediterranean Sea. I dedicated two paintings to it. I incorporated it into my formal language with various layers.”
The underlying layers not only relate to the structure of his work, but his work also deals with the underlying social layers and problems.
Sometimes he elaborates on a poem. At the Watou Arts Festival, he bought a book by an unknown poet about landscapes, which inspired him to create a triptych. “On the left and right sides it’s day, in the middle it’s night. It’s about a canoe that leaves a line in the water. In the left tableau, you can almost see the canoe, in the middle tableau, you see a line, and in the right tableau, the line disappears. You don’t see the entire canoe.”
Booklets
He sometimes contributes to booklets, such as for the exhibition ‘Door Licht Geraakt’ (Touched by Light) at the Art Centre Schiedam or for the choral performance of ‘Lof der Nonsens’ (Praise of Nonsense) by Vocaal Ensemble Tiramisu, in which his wife sings, at the Pilgrim Fathers Church in Rotterdam. In this publication,the poems were on the on one side and his own work on the other.
He’s always searching for abstraction, but sometimes it’s purely about composition. “Because I work in layers, shapes and threads emerge naturally.” He’s always searching for ephemeral, underlying layers. “Those are my driving forces: my background in urban planning and my social engagement.”
Beyond Perishableness
The work ‘Beyond Perishableness’ came about when he ran into an old acquaintance who had worked for 40 years at Witte de With (now the Melly Art Institute) and was retiring. “He wanted to see if he could become an artist and ended up in a classroom next to mine in a former school building. After six months, it turned out it wasn’t working out. ‘Do you want my table top?’ he asked me, because he had a very nice work table. He sawed it into six pieces. I worked on three of them, respecting the underlying layers of pits and scratches. I painted them white. I left the red and brown on the original surface as is. I applied layers of paint and charcoal over the rest, creating, among other things, a fish and a polar bear. The table top was given a new life.”
Does he have a key work?
He does. He created several works on MDF with linen, collaged, and painted, for an exchange in Slovenia in 2015, and received the award for high-quality artwork. Afterward, he went on an artist residency in Kranj. “That work was shown in an exhibition. It gave me a tremendous rush.”
How long has he been an artist?
“Since 1996. That’s when I had my first exhibition. I’d already participated in Open Studios. It’s taken off in a relatively short time, both domestically and internationally.”
Dielemans studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam, in the Interior Architecture department, and then at the Academy of Architecture, Urban Planning, in the same city. He graduated in 1988. He became a lecturer at this academy. “I took the first-year Exercise Intake, learning to design, with architect Ad Tuns.”
After that, he worked for a time as an urban planner/designer, devoting 60 percent of his time to urban planning and 40 percent to fine art, at the firms ‘Stad en Landschap’ and ‘RBOI’. At the latter, he was Head of the design studio. “We designed new residential neighborhoods, urban renewal projects, parks, and shopping centers, with a strong focus on landscape and nature. In my fine art, I made—and still make—extensive use of structure and texture derived from urban development patterns.”
Finally, what is his philosophy?
A new meaning given to underlying structures (both physical and social) offers a new perspective on things, or as philosopher Mieke Boon has said: “You have to discover that you look at a work with certain expectations before you can let go of those expectations. If you succeed in letting go, you open up new possibilities for seeing.”
Mieke Boon, ‘Philosophy of Looking’, 2009.
Images
1) Glacier Loss 100×100 mixed media on canvas, 2) Kassdam 1 80×80 acrylic on canvas, 3) Kassdam 2 80×80 acrylic on canvas, 4) Bluish Delight 100×100 acrylic on canvas, 5) Eco spores, 80×80 acrylic on canvas, 6) Portrait photo by Nikolaj Dielemans, 7) Beyond Perishableness, 55 x 55, mixed media on panel, 8) Equilibrium, 60 x 120, acrylic on linen, 9) Floating image, 100 x 100, acrylic on linen, 10) Landscape poetry, 50 x 50, mixed media on panel, 11) On linture, mixed media on panel
http://www.nikolajdielemans.com/
https://stichtingkunstwerkt.nl/exposities/2025/opleven-en-dood
https://stichtingkunstwerkt.nl/deelnemers/ndielemans
https://inzaken.eu/index.php/2025/09/12/nikolaj-dielemans-op-zoek-naar-onderliggende-lagen/
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