Gerco de Ruijter is a Rotterdam-based visual artist working in the field of photography and film. In the late 1980s he started using kites, balloons and fishing poles to create images of situations far removed from our own vantage point. Since 2012 he has been mining Google Earth as a source, resulting in films like CROPS (2012) and Playground (2014). His art explores how far presentation of the landscape can be reduced and yet still remain recognizable.
Fleur de Sel
Documenting the rise and fall of Dunaliella Salina, pigmenting the Presqu'île de Guérande saltflats.
Tether
An exploration along the coast of Schouwen-Duiveland in various 360 degree panoramas.
Exhibition Tether: a virtual reality trajectory (in collaboration with Sander Veenhof) presented in the Bewaerschole, September 2017
Film: From the Point to Bru: a journey in eight panoramas. Premiere at Film by the Sea in Vlissingen 2018
Grid Corrections
Film, book and exhibition.
Artist in Residence at the Ulrich Museum in Wichita Kansas (USA) 2015
Book Grid Corrections published by nai010 Rotterdam
Presentation at the Fotomuseum The Hague 2019
CROPS / Cropped
CROPS / Cropped is a project on center pivot irrigation in the USA.
Long water-sprinkler arms rotate around a central pivot, irrigating circular fields of verdant crops in desert or semiarid environments. Often a well, located at the center of the circle, pumps water up from vast aquifers in the rock formations below, or Rio Grande water is canalized and redirected into the deserts feeding the well. Once the Rio Grande reaches Mexico, it's riverbed has dried.