BIO
Van Drager is Canadian Dutch German artist. His work explores Modern art, namely Minimalism and Monochrome painting.
As an experienced emerging Canadian artist, Drager started painting abstract paintings and drawings in the mid 1990s while at the University of British Columbia. After attaining his B.F.A, he moved to Montreal in 1995, during the Quebec Referendum, studying painting and Eastern and Western Philosophy at Concordia University. While at Concordia, informally mentoring with Guidio Molniari, he created mostly Abstract Expressionist works, however, leaving Montreal in 1996, he developed a more “pure” and “minimal” abstraction. His abstract painting continues the Modernist idea of experimentation, play, autonomy, with the material, form, aesthetics, line, colour, composition, texture, mark making, towards an empirical realization of phenomenology. Both the painted object and process of making are equally important in Drager’s work, where the act of painting is to experience freedom, and the painted object presents and explores beauty.
Drager has exhibited painting in Canada and has work in private collections.
C.V,
Education
2010 Dutch Art Institute, Holland, M.F.A.
2005 Concordia University, Canada, ( Installation )
1998 West Virginia University, U.S.A., ( M.F.A. 1st year painting complete )
1995 Concordia University , Canada ( Painting + Philosophy )
1994 Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Canada ( Colour Theory )
1992 University of British Columbia, Canada, B.F.A.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I present research on abstract painting that continues the Modernist idea of experimentation, autonomy, poetry, with abstracting, deconstructing, reconstructing, recontextualizing, imbibing, exploring, the material, form, aesthetics, line, color, composition, texture, mark making, “objectness”, “materiality”, “formalism”, within the freedom of expression, of Individualism, of Idealism, and of Avant Gardism, in the moment.There is a conversation between my painting, and Idealism, Bohemianism, Avant Gardism, Zen, philosophy, and the Poetic.
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QUOTES by Van Drager 1999 – 2024
- ” I paint abstraction because the process can not be defined, articulated convalesced, known by text or words or subjectivity or philosophy “.
- “Minimalism parallels Nature, not in rhythm, patterns, and feeling, rather
in being a place / site / experience, where. a person may have a real personal human relations with rhythm, patterns, and feeling in real space “. - ” A Minimal painting is like a tree. neither have to have mean
something, rather their presenting of form, shape, structure, is their truest meaning “ - ” Art and the artist represents true freedom in civilization, just ask Plato.”
art@vandrager.ca