Marco Käller

On the river Meuse at the helm of his small sailboat, he felt great freedom even as a child. This feeling of inde-pendence is still part of sailing for him today, and as an artist he expresses it in his works.
He grew up in Nijmegen. Only later did he and his wife Käthi move to the coast and open his gallery with studio in Marina Makkum on the IJsselmeer and close to the Wadden Sea.
Through his passion for water, Käller got to know a wide variety of people: recreational and professional sailors, fishermen and Wadden Sea guides, as well as officers from the navy and merchant marine. They all share the same fascination: the sea and the view of that endless mass of water, always with a different face, never the same. Käller understands this feeling personally and artistically very well. At the same time, he wonders why water is threatening to some, while to others it represents a limitless world of freedom? Oceans, lakes and rivers have always connected the world, but they can also be the cause of conflict.
The sea touches many lives, it connects and separates at the same time. These themes fascinate the artist. He likes to experience, hear and read about water and people. Inspiration from a maritime world.
Life in Fryslân is characterized by living with water. Sailing is firmly anchored in Frisian culture. This gives wonderful stories about living with the sea, mudflats, catching shrimps and finding pieces of shipwrecks. For Käller, this constantly provides inspiration for new forms in different materials.
After loving boats and the freedom that sailing offers, his gaze turned to that other maritime world that surrounds him. His work is also inspired by what washes ashore and is fished up from the depths.

Water and fire

Käller captures brief moments and fragile things of water for a long time in material that defies time. He creates his
his sculptures and reliefs primarily in robust, reddish-brown oxidized, Corten steel or rough-cut Inox. The steel stands in stark contrast to the subject and in his work the artist engages in combinations as impossible as are already contained in the theme itself. Piece by piece monuments to fragile life, very finely cut and forged with fire.

Working together on an Sculpture

Käller does not operate solo: as a set and interior designer he had already learned what collaboration with professionals can bring, and now he continues to make use of their expertise and skills. For example, the current steel sculptures are realized after the design phase in the Buwalda workshop.

On the tide line

After high tide, the tide line is again richly filled. All washed up from mysteriously dark, deep water, alongside signs of life on the other side.
Kelp and jellyfish floated through the water, an empty bottle rolled to and from the shore. Scattered lay pieces of wreckage etched by salt and time, blunt cut glass,rust iron too. Colorful lint, ghost nets and work gloves bear witness to fishing, a “My Little Pony” tells of lost cargo. Waterfowl tripping through the water to fish or screeching attacks from the high dune. Crabs run for their lives. Shrimps, almost invisibly crawling along the bottom, are picked up and swallowed.
The artist observes it all eagerly.These impressions are rearranged into mostly filigree Corten steel objects, which evoke associations with seaweed or strange life forms. Thus arose the series of Corten steel “Beach Finds” and “Marine Structures.

SINCE 1956

• Born in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
• Attended the art school in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and graduated at ARTEZ.
• Took classes at Anton van Geffen at the Theatre School Arnhem.
• Scenographer from 1981 to 1992.
• Also art teacher at the Heldring College in Zetten from 1981 to 1996.
• Founded in that period with Käthi Habig a private experimental theatre house in a former Delft Blue Factory: Theater Spelbeeld in Nijmegen.
• After this period in 1992 he continued as a visual artist and designer.
• From 1995 to 2011 he lived and worked in his house and art studio in Malden.
• Opened in 2007 Gallery and Art Studio Marco Käller in Marina Makkum near IJsselmeer and the sea.
• Lives and works from 2011 in Makkum, FR