Inez de Brauw, Ricardo van Eyk, Claudia Martínez Garay, Lorena Solís Bravo, Anouk van Zwieten
March 24 – April 21, 2018
Characteristic of the present is that it contains a certain potential: the present is always something more and something different than a self-contained moment in history. In ‘Drifting and Dreaming’ the work of five young artists is brought together. This work shows that it is mobile, fluid, unfinished and full of potential. It shows that the past and the present are constantly transforming by definition, and are reinventing themselves and each other. What links the work of these five is the lack of a programmatic approach. They work in their own medium without the need to critically question the medium itself, free from the past and open to the future. Whether it is sculpture, painting or performance: it is played with and in the chosen medium. Individual positions that emerge above and in which dreaming about possibilities is central: Drifting and Dreaming.
The first thing you notice in the paintings by Inez de Brauw (NL, 1989) is their materiality, a wonderful mix of wood, plaster and paint. Her work, which is shifted back and forth with elements from reality, is based on the awareness of continuous friction between historical periods and cultures. Whether they are spaces as we know them from the lifestyle glossies, or centuries-old decorative wallpaper or textile patterns: in the images of De Brauw ‘the things’ are deconstructed and brought to light as abstract concepts, for even materialized, but in essence elusive because part of a permanent migration.
Ricardo van Eyk (NL, 1993) feels a painter. His work arises from his wonder about the urban environment and how the city functions as a ‘carrier’ on which the traces of human presence, the passing of time, and the decline are marked. Images from his environment that he experiences as meaningful are isolated and used within his own work to discover the logic of those images. Van Eyk works from wooden constructions: plates that are put together, in which the cut is an image element and on which paint is applied, sanded away and re-applied. Found objects, just like the use of home-garden-and-kitchen materials underline his playful way of working.
In her work Claudia Martínez Garay (Peru, 1983) focuses on objects and their cultural context: she questions the way in which artefacts are preserved, distributed and transformed. In doing so she asks critical questions about the influence of Western colonial thinking on these processes in which appropriation is central. What role can art play in problematising existing relationships? The objects of Martínez Garay in the exhibition depict uses and stories from her native country that expressly mix with aesthetic, social or economic elements from other contexts.
Text, performance, sound, sculpture: the work of Lorena Solís Bravo (Peru, 1991) is a dynamic mix of media and energies. Meanings are not fixed: so much seems to be clear in the works of Solís Bravo. “My artistic practice whirls around the use of language and materials in relation to space. Through materials I research myself and my surroundings. Starting from mental abstraction, the works slowly develop into something else, something more, something new. Something I am not able to understand: the work has alienated from it’s maker. With sculptures I explore the physical field around me, with performance I explore a mental one. ”
The paintings by Anouk van Zwieten (NL, 1991) are the reflection of what she experiences in her daily life. Often a work starts with a quick drawing with paint on canvas. That drawing evokes associations that she then responds to. A form is created and on top of that a drawing and new shapes and even more drawings: the working method of Van Zwieten is intuitive and looks frisky and playful. Perhaps this is partly caused by the fact that objects that are recognizable from reality always appear in her work, whether they are lemons, cans, or slices of bread. But the intriguing in her ‘full’ paintings is a certain emptiness. The multitude of shapes and objects is, as it were, carried by the parts in the image that have been painted away. The tension of the suggestion determines the attraction of the swirling works of Van Zwieten.
