Introduction
by Cees Straus
That memorable 11th of September I found myself on a plane to the United States. If
one leaves Amsterdam early in the morning, one should arrive at about the same time,
local time of course, in the eastern part of the U.S. But this time we didn't make it.
Just before the pilot set in the landing, we heard that all airports in the U.S. had been
shut down. Briefly, we were told that a disaster had taken place. It took a couple of
hours before we began to discern the contours what was perceived as a monstrous
attack on the heart of western civilization, an attack on a city famous for its
contribution to society at large. In New York, both residents and visitors feel at home
quickly, despite all negative aspects of big city life. The first time I visited New York,
a few years ago, I had come to meet Jean Ruiter. He lived in a quite neighborhood
near 11th Street, slightly north of that part of Manhattan where the streets have names.
During our long interview, we walked through those parts of the city where one still
feels the old culture, the almost European neighborhoods just north of the Twin
Towers. There, in the southern part of town and on Ellis Island, Ruiter found the
inspiration for the images that would make up his series 'Urban Opera.'
When the consequences of the events of the morning of the 11th of September
became clearer - we had disembarked in Canada and followed the news on the
television sets in our temporary accommodation ? it dawned upon me that New York
had become part of the Urban Opera Jean Ruiter had shown me. ,,Opera is drama and
suffering, things abundantly present in a metropolis. That jungle of people who attack
one another and try to do each other in to improve their own condition." That 11th of
September New York experienced drama and suffering on a scale unprecedented
since the Second World War. One could say that Ruiters sadly prophetic Urban Opera,
completed in 1992, has turned out to be his most poignant work so far.
In this first decade of the 21st century artists exhibit an remarkable interest in what is
going on in society. After a period of general navel-gazing, every form of
introspection inevitably seems to run into a taboo. Many who earlier concentrated on
the aberrations of the human body, often with no other aim than to shock, have
become hesitant. In his works Jean Ruiter ridicules those ego trips. The series
"Corpus Constructed" (1995) for example is an ironic comment on the so-called
fitness culture. And in the series "Women: Sacrificed and Desired" (1992-1993)
Ruiter calls attention to the exaggerated interest in the physical aspects of feminine
beauty, a phenomenon which, in Ruiters view, has been largely misunderstood
anyway.
Ruiters most recent series ? as for now called "Silks" or "Revelation of time" -
contemplates beauty on a higher level. The works are centered around historical
images with a cultural, sociological or sometimes even scientific meaning. In this
series, Ruiter works with pictures he found in encyclopedias from the fifties of the
20th century. By reusing them, the meaning of the contents have to be, as it were,
reconsidered: the flash-backs rise above feelings of nostalgia and place the meaning
of the images in a contemporary perspective. Ruiter projects the images against a
silken background. This is a conscious choice: he feels the ever elegant material has a
cultivated status with a long evolution. Just as each picture has historical value, so silk
stems from a time in which much care was given to the cultural expression of the
material. At the same time the material marks a transition from Ruiters preference for
landscapes, always dominantly present in his art, to more static surroundings. Ruiters
work on Silks coincides with a drastic change in his way of living: he exchanged the
nomadic existence of the eternal traveler for a permanent residency in France.
Ruiters focus on society in all her cultural facets is much more than just a whim of
fashion. This involvement has permeated his work from early on. Nowadays, Ruiter
may be called a contemporary artist ? especially his use of photography as a plastic
art is very fashionable at the moment ? but in the seventies and eighties he was ahead
of his time. Not that it was a conscious choice to concentrate on the society in which
he thought he was functioning. It always was, and still is, his intention to reflect on
what occupies his mind or rouses his interest. Apart from his interest in North-
American society ? by now he has traveled everywhere in the US ? he is just as
curious to see what cultural icons were produced by countries such as Mexico, Japan,
Cambodia, Thailand, North Africa and Turkey. However, western culture continues to
fascinate him, as can be witnessed from the timeless quality of the series 'Cathedrals
in the Desert' (1994). For this series he built large installations in the Californian
desert, which he subsequently photographed.
Though he considers photography the best medium for expressing his opinions on
society, Ruiter is not a photographer in the traditional sense. He is by no means a
documentary photographer who simply records the situations he encounters. There
always has to be a prior moment that renders a situation against which he can measure
himself. Ruiter chooses a country because the culture, the art and sometimes the
landscape appeal to him. At the same time this country has to offer something he
wants to grasp, to work with: the American presidential elections, for example, or the
fact that in every American city you'll find a shop filled with items of a dollar or less.
Ruiter does not report these phenomena. He distills images, in this case concrete
objects, and provides them with a new context. Usually he does this on the spot,
probably to capture the atmosphere of what he has just discovered. But sometimes he
chooses a different approach. The Indian culture of Mexico, subject of thousands of
photo's and films that do no more than capture the Mayan and Aztec temples and
palaces, provided Ruiter with an incentive to create studio images ('Maya's, Aztecs
and the Rainforest', 1991- '92.). At the same time he realized that with his recreation
of this culture he was entering the political arena. Among other things, he pointed at
the deplorable situation of Indians living in the vulnerable rainforest. Without making
a political statement ? the last thing on Ruiters mind ? the series grew into a piece of
evidence for the proposition that all foreign interest in this as yet uncontaminated
civilization inevitably takes a wrong turning.
Huizen (NL), november 2001.
