Your work is quite influenced by the De Stijl artistic movement, what is about the style that makes you develop it?

We guess De Stijl is one of many influences that shaped our work into what it is today. De Stijl has had a big influence on contemporary design and the arts in the Netherlands in general. We do not literally share the exact same utopian ideas (we live in a completely different time), but the clear, abstract and bold imagery and strong connection to architecture and industrial and graphic design have been a major inspiration to us, and still is.

What is one of the projects that had a profound impact on Graphic Surgery?

Lately, we have done a project in Leeuwarden, the city where we met, using wood and paint to create a relief. A new level of working for us, working in three dimensions. Probably recent projects are always the most interesting because you create new steps and push your work in new directions. Like the screen printing project we finished last month in Rome with the excellent printer Arturo Amitrano of 56fili. Site-specific interventions of minimalistic wall paintings in Mexico City, executed by the studio assistants of artist Aldo Chaparro inside and on the outside facade of his studio and at La Construcción in Guatemala City, by Diego Sagastume and his collaborators, have created new possibilities. It is an interesting way to collaborate with these initiatives on the other side of the globe, via the internet by simply providing detailed specifications. In a way, it is similar to musicians creating tracks together. And it is our subtle contemporary reference to the way Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings can and are still being produced.

Do you work on individual projects as well? How do they differ from Graphic Surgery?

No. As mentioned, we bring our own ingredients to the table, and we divide work on various projects, but it is all part of one body of work. It is important to feel creatively free, and to be able to create what seems logical for each of us as individual artists within Graphic Surgery, but because we combine these two visions it only makes the work stronger and more interesting in a broad sense. The work consists of a strong balance between complex and minimal.

On what kind of tools do you rely on creating your pieces?

Many different tools. From digital to analog, from computer to paint. We like to use state of the modern art tools as well as very classic tools. As long as we can put it to good use to create the work we want to create. We use a lot of rulers, spirit levels, set squares, tape measure as well as pencil, chalk line and many, many meters of masking tape.