The exhibition 'DOCUMENTARISTA documents: HEYBOER revisited' in Stichting outLINE - Amsterdam, is the evidence of one of those rare chance events in life: the very meeting of two souls. Resonating with arcane implications, the entire parcours and artistic output of Anton Heyboer [1924, Sabang - 2005, Den Ilp] - a unique artistic figure, not only in regard of the Dutch art panorama, but in the entire world - proves to be a serious challenge to the usual perception of art practice in modern times.

By placing the creative and intellectual dimension of art making into a secluded and truly peculiar existence, Heyboer showed how personal investigation and search for a true art may turn into a complete self-enclosed and highly inventive process, where the relationships between original ideas, concepts, and work practice determine a radically new way of considering [and subsequently living] art to a degree that all the life habits in turn become autonomous works of art.

Heyboer revisited stems from DOCUMENTARISTA/Jasmina Fekovic’s first-person discovery of the impressive and touching self-made art work environment-turned-into-a-personal-paradise where artist Anton Heyboer moved and lived for more than forty years. After having lived in Haarlem, Borger, Amsterdam and in the south of France, in 1961 he settled in a farm located in Den Ilp [NL]. Such a vast and inventive complex, home to Heyboer and his four wives, Maria, Lotti, Joke and Marike, became the center and veritable hub for a life uncompromisingly devoted to the creation and fulfilment of art creation. Beside a generous production of drawings, paintings, sculptures and etchings, the transformation of the living environment [which took place over an extensive period until 1974] became part of his daily art practice. Living as close to a hermit, Heyboer and his women spent years there each of them having their personal residence. He shared his own space with the sheep dogs Elsa and Makker. His fifth wife Petra lives across the street and runs Anton Gallery.

DOCUMENTARISTA/Jasmina Fekovic already in 2001 obtained the exceptional permission from Heyboer’s brides’ to be able to visiting and filming the house for her documentary Mathilde Willink Superpoes. In 2008 Fekovic went back for the first time since Heyboer’s death inside Anton’s own living quarter which is kept as a shrine and is still exactly the same as when Anton lived there and where his dog still resides. Every day Anton’s voice comforts the griefed, lonely animal.

DOCUMENTARISTA is Jasmina Fekovic’s [1976, Ossendrecht, NL] work incarnation. Her uncompromising work attitude is generated from a genuine interest in bearing testimony and re-creating her personal journies and life trajectories. Neutral as her filmic and video production may appear at a first glance, on the contrary it doesn’t just deliver facts and references but builds also on a strong subjectivity [implicated by the deliberate artist’s choices] which places eyes, ears and perception at test whilst at the same time “managing to represent not only her own practice but that of other artists”.

Jasmina Fekovic lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. She has participated in a number of exhibitions in Europe and has been nominated for the ‘Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs 2007’ by the Fonds BKVB, The Volkskrant and NPS-television. Recently she had a solo show at MuHKA in Antwerp, and has exhibited in Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle [B], Showroom MAMA in Rotterdam, P3 and Lux in London, MiArt in Milan and Marta Museum in Herford [D].