'The Workers': by Scheltens & Abbenes, 2018

‘The Workers’ consists not only of these almost still lives of painted flowers - printed large scale as to make the texture and every trace of use on the vans discernible - but also shows very mundane objects: different tools for gardening, beehives in various colours, a garbage can with layers of chemical paint spilled over its edges. On the photographs, however, the objects are transformed into highly stylised and aesthetic compositions, drawing attention to the colours and shapes, up to the point the viewer would almost forget their original context, as the play of textures and layers is endlessly fascinating.

What is not shown in these images are the humans hands that use the tools for gardening, to grow and cut the flowers the vans transport, that built and painted the beehives and tended to the bees.  The images the viewers are left with are third hand, so to say.  There are no flowers, nor bees, only man-made objects, all painted over,  then taken up by the artists to be extracted from their context and to be made into an image.

The artists have added an extra layer, as it were, over these objects, and elevated them to aesthetic and abstract images - though still very recognisable, especially in their relation to each other. This layer serves as an extra remove but to remind the viewer of the original context of these objects and the processes of human intervention: to render objects useful, or, once assembled by the artists, to make appealing yet not obvious new compositions, images within the realm of art.