Kevin Langedijk

Kevin Langedijk was born in the Netherlands in 1982 and grew up in a long tradition of visual art and design. Attracted by the dynamic advertising world and inspired by pop artists, he chose to study graphic and media design and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in design from the Netherlands. His career in graphic design took him to New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Rome and Paris, where he lived for extended periods and came to know the international world of fashion and lifestyle brands from the inside. Since 2012 he has made works of art that express his keen observation of society, working in series that explore contemporary consumer culture.

With the series ADDICTED, Langedijk returns to the late eighties and early nineties. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, prosperity increased rapidly: it was a time of quick money, lavish luxury and the rise of lifestyle brands such as Prada and Versace, when people built an image of themselves from the brands they surrounded themselves with. It was also the period when the chemical drug XTC arrived at house parties. Both lifestyle brands and recreational drugs are now widely accessible, and both bring pleasure and feelings of happiness. Langedijk places the logos of contemporary lifestyle brands on enlarged XTC pills, proposing that the desire for luxury brands is universal, of all times and potentially addictive. Brand logos stand for values people want to be associated with; the popularity of individual brands may change, but the desire to stand out remains.

Langedijk has great admiration for the craftsmanship behind lifestyle brands, and the works in ADDICTED are made with the same eye for detail. Each work is built up from several layers of carved wood and treated with a matte powder paint in a pastel shade, giving a surface astonishingly close to the texture of XTC pills. The combination of shapes, colors and logos produces the colorful ADDICTED series, and by choosing a selection of logos from favorite brands each buyer can assemble a unique personal work.