Redmer Hoekstra (1982) graduated from the Art Academy in Zwolle as a visual artist and illustrator in 2009. “I’ve always loved alienation and fantasizing, daydreaming. As a child I had all kinds of theories about how the world worked. At the Academy I was able to rediscover this and process this in to my work. How things work is a fascination of mine and in many drawings you can find this. I open up appliances and objects and freely change what is inside. Often a subject gets a completely different feeling or meaning. I play with form, meaning and function, while new combinations arise. Often surprising, strange and funny but also with a strange kind of logic, a fantastic and surreal world. I find my inspiration riding the train or on the road, where my mind can float through the landscape and new connections between things appear. A philosophical view of the world and myself. Who am I? What is my reality and how do I get to decide how it looks and works? They are pen drawings on paper. I work with fine liners . By shading I create light and space, which gives a drawing life. It is important to draw as realisticly as possible, to make the alienation most powerful. It’s a laborious and almost artisanal technique . A drawing on average takes 32 to 40 hours.