Louis Nierijnck / PRIMAL ART

I had an art gallery for 25 years in the city of Maastricht in The Netherlands, focussing

on the tribal art, textiles and adornment from Africa, Himalaya and Southeast Asia.

Currently I am dealing directly with private collectors, museums, interior designers

and corporate institutions through art shows, my website and showroom in

Maastricht. For more than 20 years, I have been participating in international tribal-

art fairs in Amsterdam, Brussels, London, New York and San Francisco.

My personal fascination with ‘tribal art’, is its connection with animism and the

realization that this art-form is strongly related to the primordial awareness of pre-

historic ‘man’. That there is more between heaven and earth. Prior to the framing of this

‘idea’ in religions. Everything in nature is animated and connected. Nothing can be

added. At most manipulated. A wooden sculpture or mask is already present in the

tree (wood). The artist extracts it from the tree and creates a piece of artwork.

Hereby showing the beauty of nature without the intention of making an imitation of

a human being or a face. The artist is using the human form to express the ten;on in

the material. Therefore you can classify my personal preference as “archaic”, an aesthetic

characterized by abstrac;on and reduction of the human–form to a bare minimum.

I feel privileged making a living with handling all these beautiful artworks and

artefacts and see myself as an intermediary to channel them from one place or

person to another. All of this with the hope that they will exist forever.