Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I am Niek Hendrix, a contemporary artist and an art critic. In my work as a painter I wonder how we get to perceive an image in our minds instead of seeing the actual material. How do I recognise a real-life situation from a flat plane that sometimes does not contain hardly anything at all.
What would you consider your distinctive achievement?
There are a lot of artists that have achieved a lot of interesting stuff, so it is hard to tell what is my most distinctive achievement. I think something that makes me distinctive from other artists is my writing as Lost Painters: a Dutch webzine about contemporary art. In the past 5 years I wrote more than 1500 articles on art. It has helped my artistic vision a lot.
Contemplating on the works of others has been a catalyst for my own work.
I can say that my practice as a whole, makes me a happy person. Which is, in the end, the only profound achievement one can make.
What are the qualities needed to be able to achieve this?
Being stubborn is a very underrated quality.
What are you looking forward to?
The next work that leaves my studio.
Which advice would you give to the other professional?
I would like myself to be more generous, towards others but also to myself. We live in a time of abundance of everything, except time. Make sure that time is well spend also on things that do not relate to the actual work or career, but on those of others.
What are the challenges that we need to overcome to make ‘cultural entrepreneurship’ more accessible?
I do not believe in the concept of cultural entrepreneurship as such. Some artists make things out of thin air, things that did not exist yet. That on itself is already a form of entrepreneurship right?
The policymakers that use the term cultural entrepreneurship use it with an economic framework around it. They expect artists to behave from a framework that is simply not an artistic one. Why do we not apply cultural, ethic and aesthetic frames upon companies? That would make a lot more sense than thinking in numbers that have no actual meaning anyway. Numbers do not equal humanity, so why mixing them up?
Cultural entrepreneurship on itself is no answer to the problems the cultural field has to deal with. The problem is a lack of knowledge of the cultural frame and an over-attachment to an economic frame and wanting to put that on top of everything.
