90s Michiel Schierbeek (1948) contemporary art ‘frame for an empty space’

Michiel Schierbeek is born in 1948 in Amsterdam and studied from 1964-1968 at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Schierbeek is a sculptor, draftsman and photographer. For a number of years, Schierbeek has been working on a series of photographs entitled “Window dressing”. It is a registration of images of shop windows in various cities and countries. In shop windows, people present their products and things to other people, often with a facade that originally had a different purpose. The coincidental coincidence is interesting for Schierbeek. Everything comes together; the artistic arrangement of things, the different reflections on the windows, the people inside and the unexpected people who walk into the frame.

Schierbeek lives partly in Normandy in France and worked there on a series about the northern French coast, the Côte d’Opale and the Côte d’Albâtre. A special mix of past glory, post-war architecture, chalk cliffs and the sea. Lines are very important in almost all of his works. Because Schierbeek has been working most of his life as a sculptor his way of looking at things is strongly influenced by the way a sculptor looks at things for inspiration. He sees the shapes and clustered volumes made by builders or designed by architects but the relation between these buildings and their shapes and volumes are often not planned. There it starts to get interesting. When things escaped the rules of city planning. Michiel Schierbeek designed a stained glass series that he calls “golden section”. Sculptures based on the proportion of the golden section.

This work we offer ‘frame for an empty space’ is a stained glass table or decorative object that matches all of Schierbeek’s characteristics in art. In 1986 for example a 13 meter high tower was chosen by the Amsterdam government to position as outdoor city art object. The tower now forms the landmark of the former main entrance of the park. It is a landmark in the most literal sense of the word. The tower is also called ‘Growing voice in the tradition of De Stijl’. Inspired by the primary color range of De Stijl, the artist used the colors red, yellow and blue. But on the other hand, he also used the color ‘silver sand’ and the goldfish color of the ‘Jaguar 1980’. Also the lining is different and therefore interesting to look at. All these characteristics are also to be found in this 1995 work we offer ‘frame for an empty space’. Very rare and unique piece of art.