GREEN
Elsbeth Ciesluk, Heidi Linck,
Jim Holyoak/Matt Shane, Jos de l’Orme
Installation, video, drawings, woodcuts
12 – 28 July 2013
after that by appointment through 23 August
In cooperation with GEMAK Galerie Maurits van de Laar organizes the exhibition GREEN GEMAK which focusses on how man attempts to control and exploit nature. At GEMAK Balta, Lisa van Bommel, Anne Geene, Alike van der Kruijs, Jos de l’Orme, Kosta Tonev, Zeger Reyers, Pieter-Rim de Kroon & Maarten de Kroon are the exhibiting artists (see also: gemak.org/) The artists at Galerie Maurits van de Laar show works in which transition takes place; man’s interference in nature is reversed or nature is used to express human emotions and feelings.
In 2012 Heidi Linck (1978) made a video on the occasion of the Floriade manifestation, in which she records how nature reclaims an abandoned greenhouse. The rigid structure of the greenhouse was soon affected by the unrestrained growth of wild plants and bushes climbing into the pillars and covering the tubes of the irrigation system. The video catches the frail balance between the rampant plants and the ruinous architecture of the greenhouse, that inevitably will disintegrate and be consumed by nature.
Canadian artists Jim Holyoak (1978) and Matt Shane (1981) have a thirteen year collaboration in which they draw vast panoramic landscapes with dense forests in which man builds settlements and constructs pipelines that affect nature. At the Yes Naturally manifestation in the GEM, Museum for Contemporary Art The Hague they show a huge landscape that turns out to have an overall shape of a sperm whale.
At the moment the two artists are complementing the landscape with newly drawn trees and roots that are cut out and attached to the drawing. The outlines of these cut out trees are also transferred on al new sheet of paper that will be used as the base for a new drawing. Their silhouettes will be filled in with drawings of animal creatures integrated into the tree structure that will stretch from floor to ceiling in the back room of the gallery.
Nature is also the prime subject in Jos de l’Orme’s (1964) work, in expressive woodcuts he depicts forests, landscapes and animals. Recently he made a lifesize woodcut of a werewolf, the mythical creature in which man and animal are united. His main work in the exhibiton is a 3 meter high woodcut of a dark forest with barren trees that cast heavy shadows and whose branches pierce into a sky with swirling clouds. Because of the fierce movement of its lines the image is highly expressive and seems to mirror the artist’s emotions.
Elsbeth Ciesluk (1986) made a triptych in which she summons up nature with objects from her everyday environment. On the central pannel she drew a pattern of concentric circles formed by the outlines of all round objects in her home. The image thus built up refers to tree rings but also to a medieval depiction of the universe. To this central image she added highly evocative texts on the sidepanels, based on her dreams. The frailty of the typewriter letters with which they are written strengthen the poetic content of the texts.