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Which art books, prints and posters are available by and about this artist? Here is a sample of items of interest to a typical collector:
The Ravestijn Gallery brings together works by Dutch artists Ruth van Beek and Mariken Wessels. Their mutual interest in exploring the act of creation and their interventions in existing material overlap to form a powerful reflection on the female artist. In Van Beek’s spatial installation of collages, ordinary objects take on a body and life of their own. She explores the thin borders between studio and domestic life, the repetition of daily tasks, and the origins of her interest in manuals and household books. In the series of sculptures and collage works by Wessels, it is the female body that becomes matter.
With poems by Basje Boer and an essay by Robert Petzoldt
In this series, The Levitators are a species of animals that originated from images of domestic dogs. Seeing these pets, now bred in all possible shapes and forms, it is hard to believe that they descend from wild animals. In the photos they pose patiently for the camera of their owner, looking their best, tails wagging. To bring the dogs back to life, Ruth van Beek cuts and fold the images. Through this process of animation and fixation many things go awry. In her attempt to make the dogs fly, they gradually loose their original dog-shape, transforming into fluffy objects, unsuccessful animals. Thus through this uncertainty they become moldable and open to new interpretations.
Ruth van Beek, Dutch b. 1977
Van Beek is an artist and bookmaker who transforms found photographic imagery into tactile, three-dimensional collages. Born and based in Koog aan de Zaan, she graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2002. Her work is primarily derived from her extensive personal archive of vintage manuals, cookbooks, and instructional guides from the 1950s through the 1970s. By physically intervening with these images—using techniques such as folding, cutting, and applying layers of painted paper—she strips them of their original domestic context to create surreal, biomorphic forms that often appear to be living, autonomous characters.
Her practice is deeply tied to the photobook as an artistic medium rather than a simple catalog of work. Notable publications include The Hibernators (2011), The Arrangement (2013), which was shortlisted for the Aperture Photobook of the Year Award, and the massive 500-page volume The Oldest Thing (2023), which explores the connection between her own archival methods and her mother's collection of household binders. van Beek's work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as The Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and Flowers Gallery in London. Her unique aesthetic, which balances the familiar with the uncanny, has also led to high-profile collaborations with fashion labels like Marni.
