AEROPLASTICS
contemporary
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Margi GEERLINKS "More than Perfect " recent photographs
Marisca VOSKAMP "Home Sweet Home" mixed media
Exhibition until Oct 5th 2002
AEROPLASTICS contemporary
32 rue Blanche 1060 Brussels
T 32 2 537 22 02 F 32 2 537 15 49
aeroplastics@brutele.be
http://www.aeroplastics.net
Images (from left to right): Margi GEERLINKS "Young boy" & "More than
Perfect 2" 2002 Ilfochrome/dibond/plexi 175 x 125 cm & 73 x 100 cm ed
of
6 each; Marisca VOSKAMP "Vlees" (Meat) ilfochrome/dibond/plexi 130 x 90
cm
ed of 3 & "Zeep" (soap) life size soap sculpture, ed of 7 + 2 artists
proofs.
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Brussels gallery, AEROPLASTICS contemporary has decided to kick off its
autumn season by comparing the recent works of two Dutch artists whom
the
gallery has already defended, Margi GEERLINKS and Marisca VOSKAMP a look
at two views marked by questions about femininity and sexual identity,
at
two approaches that seek inspiration from daily life, all the better to
transcend it.
Seated at a large metal table under a cold light, a grey-haired man
works
at a sewing machine. His work is on the verge of completion: a naked,
roughly ten-year-old boy, disproportionately large compared with his
creator, waiting patiently to be finished to take life. This revisited
version of Gepetto carving his son is emblematic of Margi Geerlinks
approach. Her photographs ask questions, in their way, about each
persons rapport with the notions of sexual identity and reproduction.
Here, unlike the legend, the father is creating not a wooden Pinocchio,
but one of flesh and blood and, what is more, without any help from the
mother. The artist is interested here not so much in the tales
(widely
explored) psychoanalytic interpretation, but in how the viewer
experiences
being confronted by these emotionally charged images. As Cecilia
Andersson notes in the preface to a recent volume on the artist
(Crafting
Humanity, 2001), Margi Geerlinks manages to make the most unlikely
situations natural, but without taking away their force. The young boy
and man are effectively father and son. It probably would not have been
possible to confer such naturalness on the scene otherwise. This idea
of
asexual reproduction as a calculated, fully controlled a process whereby
the human being literally makes his or her progeny is embodied in the
portrait of a young woman knitting the body of her future newborn child.
Elsewhere, a little girl crochets a breast that she then displays on her
chest with a mixture of pride and doubt as to the final outcome.
Without
the use of digital imagery, which enables the child whom the artist
photographs to project herself into her adult life, these could be
simply
family portraits. And whilst everyone is familiar with the face creams
that are supposed to erase the ravages of time, Geerlinks applies this
demonstration literally in her photographs of faces in which wrinkles
are
erased by the miraculous action of a simple cotton wadand technology.
Yet her constant concern is to wonder about human beings relationship
with time seen from the angle of giving birth. In viewing the portrait
of
a full-breasted seventy-year-old nursing a newborn, we cannot help
thinking about the alarming promises of medicine to push the limit of
the
childbearing years back ever farther and farther. Finally, Margi
Geerlinkss latest works a series of nudes of young women, asleep,
with
mouths dotting their bodies (see illustration) explore a more sensual
vein. However, while a recent advert for a carbonated beverage (the
name
of which, I might add, Ive forgot) used the same trick to emphasise
the
range of flavours available (the face of a typical consumer having as
many
mouths as the product has flavours), the lips thought up by the artist
are
there not to ingurgitate sugar water, but to offer themselves to other
lips.
For Marisca VOSKAMP, the question of giving birth is also primordial.
One task of my life is raising children. To raise children is to be
complete. To be complete is to surround. The life which I surround
holds
the question of what life is. Voskamp goes even farther than Margi
Geerlinks in plumbing her own life for the basic ingredients of her
artistic work, a life consisting of eating, drinking, making love,
giving
birth and dying and everything which takes place in between.
Consequently, she measures the importance of her creations by the
yardstick of her own life and the lives of her friends. So she wears a
necklace of sausages made to order by a Little Italy butcher before
turning the accessory into her dinner. In the same vein, her life with
fashion professionals (models, photographers, fashion designers, etc.)
in
New York leads to her making a beef carpaccio bikini that she wears
under
an ample coat, before flashing in that attire live on CNN. The
clearly
feminist connotation of the message directed at a profession that
reduces
women to slabs of (lean) meat authorised to wear clothes does not take
away from the drollness of the gesture. Manipulating the body or
examining
how people look at other peoples bodies is also at the heart of
Zeep
(soap), one element of which had already been exhibited by AEROPLASTICS
in
the best possible place: the bathroom. In revisiting the self-portrait
tradition, Marisca Voskamp has made several life-sized effigies of
herself
made of soap cast (see illustration) in a mould of her own naked body,
with arms raised. The choice of the material itself is not innocent,
for
it is an old-time soap recipe that includes animal fat. The
artists
aim in the Zeep series is to produce a work that exists only
through the
way the viewer wants to look at or touch it.
The catalogue of attitudes adopted by art lovers or simple passers-by
(depending on where the piece is set up) is very varied: Whilst some
people hesitate to touch the sculpture, others stroke it freely, paying
special attention to some strategic places. The ephemeral sculpture
disappears in line with how it is used. One of Marisca Voskamps
wishes
was to set up her installation in an institution for the blind. This
wish
was fulfilled, and the sinister buildings atmosphere has been changed
by
the smell of roses that wafts from the statue. An airport, prison,
school
and car park are examples of the places where she would like to set up
other Zeep effigies. All of Voskamps work must be seen from the
angle
of an approach a very healthy one in todays contemporary creation
landscape reconcile art and life.
P.-Y. Desaive
A catalogue-brochure is available for both artists - free of charge. +
Margi Geerlinks "Crafting Humanity" 48 pages - 45 Euros - postage
included
director : Jerome Jacobs
With the support of THE MONDRIAAN FOUNDATION
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