Ingrid van der Hoeven, Justin Wijers
sculptures, drawings
20 February – 20 March 2011
In her sculptures Ingrid van der Hoeven (1962), of Indonesian descent herself, focuses on the image of the Asian woman, who has freed herself from her traditional, submissive position and developed into an alert, self-confident woman. From the waist up her sculptures rise from the ground. Their posture is strong and proud, as well as modest and subdued, frequently their heads are directed upwards. The sculptures are built up from various layers of natural-coloured MDF, soft board, and more recently polyurethane. The seams between the layers are filled with pigment coloured glue that emphasizes the curves of the women and give the sculptures vitality and definition. Ingrid van der Hoeven finds the visual material for her work in Asian fashion magazines and calendars, but also in daily life on the streets of Rotterdam, where a fusion of cultures is to be seen. In the studio she photographs herself in the postures of the Asian models. She thus becomes the starting point of the sculptures and at the same time examines her own identity as a Dutch woman of a mixed cultural background.
Justin Wijers (1981) draws victims of violence and traffic accidents he finds on the Internet. With a fine jellyroller pen he depicts the battered bodies in thin, precise lines. The bodies are only partly coloured in and their contours are very lightly sketched on the white surface of the paper, at first sight they look like abstract areas of colour or islands on a map in a white sea. On the body and in the stains around it Justin Wijers has written texts and drawn flowers, plants, animals and pictograms in bright colours, which almost make a psychedelic impression. With much feeling and thought for detail, he fills in the bodies, as a tender last homage. The observer first loses himself in the beautiful colours and the many details, until the total form of the body emerges. In this way Justin Wijers confronts us with the raw reality we are faced with in the media every day, but from which we normally seclude ourselves. In the recent drawings he is increasingly focusing on the face, making the identification with the persons represented more direct and at the same time more intimate, almost affectionate.