Commedia, Get On Stage !

Andrea Freckmann

paintings, installation

8 April through 6 May 2018

Final week, finissage Sunday 6 May at 15:00 h. with tea and cookies, Andrea Freckmann is present.
(On Sunday the gallery is open from 13:00 – 17:00 hours)

with the kind support of the Mondrian Fund and Stroom Den Haag

In her paintings Andrea Freckmann (1970) creates a world in which reality and the theatrical merge into eachother. In her most recent work she specifically focuses on the Commedia dell’Arte, a form of satirical theatre that developed in Italy in the 16th century. With the help of a number of fixed characters it was used to expose social relations and human motivations, often reversing hierachical relationships like the servant who outwits his master.  Although this form of theatre is historical, its characters and plots can be effortlessly transposed to our current society. Andrea Freckmann subsequently started to research how the mechanisms of the theatre relate to the art of painting.

Instead of literal illustrations of the Commedia dell’Arte, the paintings that have evolved out of this process contain representations of objects, persons and events from Freckmann’s own immediate surroundings that might be used in a play. Recurring motives are a girl in a traditional costume, a country village, a vase, a dog and a table. At the heart of the exhibition is a stage, painted as if it were a rug with props and characters measuring 4 by 3 meters (the Commedia dell’Arte’s standard size), on which a play can be performed. Andrea Freckmann thus unites the illusory space of the painting with the physical space of the stage and incorporates her own life into the world of the theatre.