ben kruisdijk (1981 - zaandam, the netherlands) received his bachelor of arts from aki / artez, enschede in 2005.

kruisdijk mainly focuses on drawing but not in the traditional sense of the word, his own handwriting is of a secondary importance to the visual vocabulary he gathered in his work. he regularly quotes anatomical images from old books, comics, flora and fauna images and reproductions of modernist works of the first half of the 20th century.
his work seems to have a scientific base because of his objective approach. however his work transcends this scientific nature through a strong underlying melancholy.

in 2007, together with artist conny kuilboer, kruisdijk formed the art collective kruisdijk / kuilboer.
kruisdijk / kuilboer creates work in which the role of the modern day artist is the main subject, this often means that individual works made by either artists are used as building materials for new installations.

in 2009 and 2010 kruisdijk was asked to teach at aki / artez, enschede.

his work is included in several (private) collections in the netherlands and abroad and is represented by the following galeries:

vincent verbist // actionfields gallery - brussels
galerie karin sachs - munich
fruehsorge contemporary drawings - berlin
galerie frank taal - rotterdam

text by yasmijn jarram


ben kruisdijk's drawings look exceptionally clear, almost simple. nevertheless, they do not allow themselves to be directly elucidated. there are works that are accompanied by text, but whether or not this serves to clarify or confuse is not evident.
whatever the case, confusion is regularly present at a visual level. sheets of paper on which cuttings from comic strips or colour books have been stuck with tape look like collages, whereas everything is actually very precisely drawn.

in addition, kruisdijk integrates art-historical influences in his work, particularly influences from the modernism from the early 20th century.
the carriers that kruisdijk chooses for his drawings are not always self-evident. for example, he processes (used) x-ray photos, among other things. he scratches the pictures with a knife and sees what happens to them in another context, i.e., that of the artwork. liberated from their societal function, the aesthetic qualities of the x-ray photos are immediately apparent. due to their sober colours, transparency, shadow element and fragile play of lines, the image acquire a quality that is almost poetic.

kruisdijk often takes the motifs for his work from nature: animals, leaves, people and especially anatomy capture his imagination. his drawings with an 'academic character' recall posters in the biology classroom, but have a humorous twist: a half-dissected male hand with polished nails, or two hand skeletons that caress one another affectionately.

the combination of various visual resources leads to a carefully structured visual language in which kruisdijk the artist is not easily identifiable. within the discipline of drawing, which is frequently associated with intimacy and personality, that is a tense paradox. as an explorer, kruisdijk investigates the boundaries of drawing: he plays with the medium.
works are disguised as colouring pages and childish stickers. he invites you to connect imaginary numbers, to cut along dottes lines, or to fill in the missing letter. kruisdijk sketches the contours, the spectator colours them in.