Marijke Verhoef & Renata Bauer - Shape on the border
By definition, a duo exhibition has something adventurous about it. Will it be a cage fight, an academic discourse, a mishmash or a compelling tango after all? Is there a clear contrast, a common theme, a peaceful coexistence or does something of an interaction emerge? In the case of the joint presentation by Marijke Verhoef and Renata Bauer, I opt for a certain kinship in attitude. An open inquisitive eye, a listening ear for the language of their technique and material.
Marijke is a graphic artist. Of course, she also draws and paints, but she looks and thinks graphically. She translates, as it were, the world around her into two dimensions. After all, graphics are 100% flat, the paper passes tightly under the press. The map, indispensable in her travels and walks, proved a grateful source of inspiration. But at the same time, nature, from starry skies to the trees outside the window of her studio, also draws its trail in her work. Time and again, she finds new perspectives, new challenges too, within the vast field of possibilities offered by graphics. She is not afraid to be surprised. And so we see the typical graphic interplay of shapes and counter shapes in the large screen prints of the wealth of branches in front of her window. Elsewhere, it is the drops on the window, or maybe it was the starry sky or the fireworks, that turn into dots under her hands.
While Marijke draws in the surrounding world through stylisation, compression and abstraction, Renata takes the opposite route. After years of focusing on abstract painting, she felt the need to leave the flat plane of square or rectangle. From slats and linen to object. She ended up with the technique of casting abstract forms with synthetic resin. When making the object, she partly starts from a tight, defined boundary of the casting material, partly this boundary of the form is alternated with ‘free’ space to let the synthetic resin go its own way in a dosed manner when casting. This creates forms on the border of, as she herself puts it, ‘conceived and happened’. The next step is the addition of colour in the form of pigmented epoxy. It produces a smooth, industrial-looking skin with subtle colour nuances. New questions arise. How does such an industrial-looking skin relate to natural materials, earth for instance? And what about the numerous pigments available? Which colour enhances the artificial and which the natural? Questions and answers, possible answers. Because her exploration continues, always continuing.
For both Renata and Marijke, an artist is never finished.
Peggie Breitbarth, art historian