‘painted image limited’
concept: dirk jan jager
The exhibition
'painted image limited' brings together
the work of ten artists engaged directly as well as loosely within
the activity of painting. The themes involved within the works
presented are diverse. However, there is a core sensibility involving
the nature of the body, which has variously been represented with
paint: as a container being enveloped by a skin, paint as that skin,
paint literally on the skin, paint removed by the body and thus
imprinting the image of the body, and finally in the classical manner
of paint depicting an illusion of the body. Among the participants that provide an interpretation are Karin Bos, Lilian Eliëns, Monika Sosnowska, Chantal Spit, Clary Stolte, Kim Streur, Brigitte Topman, Naomi Warmer and Monika Zarzeczna.
The materiality of paint enables some of these artists in their work. In Kim Streur's Amazon painting there are two conspiring elements, which instruct the viewer. Firstly, the image is formed by absorbing the paint into a bodysuit worn by the artist, who lies directly onto the canvas. This is the opposite of using a naked girl as a rubberstamp as in Yves Klein's happenings. Streur leaves a negative bodyprint in the monochromatic field of the painting, which can be modified as an image using solvents among other techniques. The image is the second important element, which shows an almost classical frieze, such as those on the sides of the Acropolis. There are three figures, whose bodies are formed from the artist's own. They are modified into Amazonian archers; they are clones of each other, repeating into a patern. Clary Stolte's small untitled canvasses hung modestly around the space; they sit stoically as if neglected. Our first impression is of some minimal painter, who makes ugly paintings without the respect of painterlyness or the tradition of paintings from sensibility of minimal artists, such as Robert Ryman. We are right in this assumption, because as it turns out Stolte's paintings use odd substances, such as the creams used to soothe medical conditions, such as piles. We can not be aware of this as viewers; however, this knowledge transforms the meaning of the work, because the canvas is as a human skin and the paint is almost treatment for these ailing works.
The figure is used throughout the show. The treatment of the figure varies greatly; from say Naomi Warmer's [1970, Haarlem NL] transformed fashion magazine clippings - girly faces and amputated arms, which are embedded between visceral dispersions of resin based substances and the plastic sheets on which the photo image has been copied on - to the more conventionally painted, but nevertheless disturbing work of Chantal Spit [1971, Losser NL]. She places a little girl standing on a railway track; evoking metaphorically the vulnerability of youth? And the immanence of disaster or at least radical transformation. The girl is depicted in a party dress. This seems nostalgic, but heightens her innocense and therefore the drama of the impending disaster. The body as a theme re-emerges in the intallation work of Monika Sosnowska [1972, Ryki PL] , whose upturned bath with its pregnancy of the form, reminds of the cadaver of a beached whale. Perhaps the second element of the installation, which is a fish painted into the interior of a wooden box, secures for us this aquatic interpretation. This work is illusive to interpretation and attempts a poetic association between elements; it is surrealistic and playful. In the end, despite all this, there is a plaintive sadness.
Other artists in the exhibition demonstrated the theme of the body. The opening of the exhibition was adorned by real models, painted by Monique Schaefer. This Body Art-event brought to the show an element of carnival, which was playfully sexy. By contrast Lilian Eliëns' [1967, Heerlen NL] painting of a masked and erotically dressed female figure with deformed stiletto heels, mimics the fashion world. This figure seems to be passively bound by the clothing; the viewer is asked to contemplate the sexuality of this figure. The mask and the acidity of the paintingstyle give clues to the pathos of the work. This work hangs on an edge between celebration and critique. It instructs us to make our own minds up. The participants in 'painted image limited' are all female. To a large extent they are all painters, but all use material and its inherent qualities to express a condition. Some of the work may have a feminist agenda, but more importantly all of the work is indivisibly humanistic.
The materiality of paint enables some of these artists in their work. In Kim Streur's Amazon painting there are two conspiring elements, which instruct the viewer. Firstly, the image is formed by absorbing the paint into a bodysuit worn by the artist, who lies directly onto the canvas. This is the opposite of using a naked girl as a rubberstamp as in Yves Klein's happenings. Streur leaves a negative bodyprint in the monochromatic field of the painting, which can be modified as an image using solvents among other techniques. The image is the second important element, which shows an almost classical frieze, such as those on the sides of the Acropolis. There are three figures, whose bodies are formed from the artist's own. They are modified into Amazonian archers; they are clones of each other, repeating into a patern. Clary Stolte's small untitled canvasses hung modestly around the space; they sit stoically as if neglected. Our first impression is of some minimal painter, who makes ugly paintings without the respect of painterlyness or the tradition of paintings from sensibility of minimal artists, such as Robert Ryman. We are right in this assumption, because as it turns out Stolte's paintings use odd substances, such as the creams used to soothe medical conditions, such as piles. We can not be aware of this as viewers; however, this knowledge transforms the meaning of the work, because the canvas is as a human skin and the paint is almost treatment for these ailing works.
The figure is used throughout the show. The treatment of the figure varies greatly; from say Naomi Warmer's [1970, Haarlem NL] transformed fashion magazine clippings - girly faces and amputated arms, which are embedded between visceral dispersions of resin based substances and the plastic sheets on which the photo image has been copied on - to the more conventionally painted, but nevertheless disturbing work of Chantal Spit [1971, Losser NL]. She places a little girl standing on a railway track; evoking metaphorically the vulnerability of youth? And the immanence of disaster or at least radical transformation. The girl is depicted in a party dress. This seems nostalgic, but heightens her innocense and therefore the drama of the impending disaster. The body as a theme re-emerges in the intallation work of Monika Sosnowska [1972, Ryki PL] , whose upturned bath with its pregnancy of the form, reminds of the cadaver of a beached whale. Perhaps the second element of the installation, which is a fish painted into the interior of a wooden box, secures for us this aquatic interpretation. This work is illusive to interpretation and attempts a poetic association between elements; it is surrealistic and playful. In the end, despite all this, there is a plaintive sadness.
Other artists in the exhibition demonstrated the theme of the body. The opening of the exhibition was adorned by real models, painted by Monique Schaefer. This Body Art-event brought to the show an element of carnival, which was playfully sexy. By contrast Lilian Eliëns' [1967, Heerlen NL] painting of a masked and erotically dressed female figure with deformed stiletto heels, mimics the fashion world. This figure seems to be passively bound by the clothing; the viewer is asked to contemplate the sexuality of this figure. The mask and the acidity of the paintingstyle give clues to the pathos of the work. This work hangs on an edge between celebration and critique. It instructs us to make our own minds up. The participants in 'painted image limited' are all female. To a large extent they are all painters, but all use material and its inherent qualities to express a condition. Some of the work may have a feminist agenda, but more importantly all of the work is indivisibly humanistic.
