Melissa Gordon | Lieke Snellen | Nina Yuen
25 Apr - 06 Jun 2009
MELISSA GORDON | LIEKE SNELLEN | NINA YUEN
"All Cretans are liars, said the Cretan"
Curated by Jeanine Hofland
The title of this three-person exhibition All Cretans are liars, said the Cretan derives from the poem ‘Cretica’ written by the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos round 600 BC and is supposed to be the first discovered self-referential paradox in language. The title refers to the non-existing concept of this exhibition, as I try to emphasize the individual works of art in the context of the whole instead of contextualizing the presented artworks by thematic or formalistic similarities. The artists included in this exhibition: Melissa Gordon, Lieke Snellen and Nina Yuen have only been selected for the individual qualities of their works and coincidentally are part of the same exhibition.
Melissa Gordon (1981, USA)
Melissa Gordon's art practice generally deals with the construction of meaning of historical imagery and its assumptions, and most recently refers to American archival imagery from the 1930’s.
Gordon’s sculpture ‘Collage Construction (For Ben Shahn)’(2009) is a painted sculptural collage, based on two photographs made by the artist Ben Shahn for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930’s to document the sorrow of the farmers during the great depression in the US. The detailed and layered arrangement of the pictorial surface and the cut-out, house shaped structure of the sculpture seem to replace the original content of the photographs by a sentimental decorative aesthetic, referring to the rapid loss of original content of imagery.
The painting series ‘History Confounding History’(2009) depicts people working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930’s, based on archival photographs, juxtaposed by modernist brushstrokes after paintings by Morris Louis, Lee Krasner and Adolf Gottlieb. The works infuse two seemingly different histories, which actually derive out of the same crisis when these modernist painters were all working as Easel-painters. The Easel-painters project was also part of the WPA-program, providing a monthly salary for artists, who handed over their works to the government to counterbalance the problems of the crisis.
By exposing and restructuring these archival images in the medium of painting Gordon confounds certain assumed histories and questions their contemporary meaning.
Melissa Gordon was an artist in residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She has been included in ‘Dealing with Reality’ at Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, ‘Compilations III’ at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf and in the Prague Triennal in Prague. The artist held solo exhibitions at Galerie Michael Cosar in Düsseldorf and Ancient & Modern in London in 2006 and 2007 retrospectively. This year she will be included in the group exhibition “Rebelle: Art and Feminism 1969-2009” at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem and will have a solo exhibition at Marian Boesky Gallery in New York. In 2007 she was the recipient of the ABN AMRO Kunstprijs.
Lieke Snellen (1980, NL)
Lieke Snellen's sculptures, mainly composed of stacked furniture, appear to be the scraps of boredom of office workers after some late night drinks. By assembling different kinds of objects used as furniture, their original individual meaning of form balances in a delicate humorous manner into the context of their arrangement, referring to the architectural ideology of form and the human body.
The work 'Linoleum With Necklace'(2007) consists of a rolled linoleum carpet, placed vertically against a corner in the gallery space, pulled together by a string of beads.
The minimalist intervention of the necklace bends the most basic and unimaginative solution for floor covering into the surreal presence of an elegant and slim female form.
The red dot formed carpet, with an upside down chair and a rectangle, entitled ‘Across the Street’(2007) reminds of a holiday period at the office, when everybody puts their chairs on their desks to provide space for the vacuum-cleaner or less optimistic, reminds of the current economic situation in which many people clean their desks in order to never return again.
The work ‘Staete’(2008) consists of a little white box, divided by a large curtain with holes. It looks like a maquette marking the front view of a giant office building, juxtaposed by a detailed three dimensional view of its interior and recalls ideas of being locked up inside and want to be part of the beholders outside or vice versa.
Snellen’s most recent work entitled ‘Zucker Backer Style’(2009) is composed out of stacked white boxes, chairs, a mirror and miniature ice cup umbrellas, and appears as being an enlarged fancy cup filled with delicious vanilla ice, decorated with glittering sticks and colorful umbrellas, waiting to be eaten by a little girl wearing a summer dress and flip flops, whilst in the meantime the individual elements of the sculpture, such as the chairs and boxes, never lose their original meaning.
By simplifying the world at large and enlarging the simple and small with objects used in an environment of labor, Snellen questions the old and new meaning and associations of forms in relation to the medium of sculpture.
Lieke Snellen received a MA in fine arts at the Piet Zwart institute in Rotterdam and has had solo exhibitions at kunstcentrum Hengelo in Hengelo and De Nederlandsche Cacaofabriek in Helmond and has been included in several group exhibitions such as at Tent in Rotterdam and at the Veemvloer in Amsterdam.
Nina Yuen (1981, Hawaï)
Nina Yuen’s films are associative playfully composed assemblages of performances, collages and montages, usually revolving around a flux of imagery and spoken monologues merging personal and collective memory.
The film presented in this exhibition, entitled ‘Joan’(2009) connects the cruel death of the historical French woman Joan of Arc, who was burned alive on 31 May 1431 in Rouen after being accused of heresy, and the voluntary death of moths flying into light bulbs, after the poem ‘The lesson of the Moth’ by Don Marquis. The work evokes thoughts on living a meaningless life and die when you think the party is over or live a meaningful life without any influence on how or when it ends. The film alternates scenes of a burning cut-out image of a woman hanging in the field, of cinders on a stick resurrecting into moths, and a performance of Yuen reenacting Joan of Arc, accompanied by a poetic voice over narrating on Joan and moths. The work is presented on a in white paper covered monitor, placed on a white floor surrounded by paper cut outs of moths and pop-up books used in her films, objectifying the process of Yuen’s art practice.
Nina Yuen is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and has been short listed for the Volkskrant Art Prize 2009.
Although I never intended to curate this exhibition, I paradoxically see several possibilities to connect the presented artworks by a theme. To start with the fact that all three artists coincidentally are women, born in the beginning of the 1980’s, their seemingly shared interest in found imagery and objects, their use of collage techniques to assemble their works, the direct or indirect reference of crisis and even the lie of the Cretan could be a frame of reference for the paradox that emerges in all of their works.
I am wondering why they have all these things in common; is it a generational thing? A general interest of female artists? Do they maybe read the same books? Or do they see the same shows? Is it the globalization of the art world that creates a common denominator? Is it probably me, who has particular interests which emerge when I look at art? Or is it simply not possible to emphasize the individual in the context of a group?
I don’t know the answer. The only thing I know is that I never curated this show,
said the curator of a group exhibition without a theme.
"All Cretans are liars, said the Cretan"
Curated by Jeanine Hofland
The title of this three-person exhibition All Cretans are liars, said the Cretan derives from the poem ‘Cretica’ written by the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos round 600 BC and is supposed to be the first discovered self-referential paradox in language. The title refers to the non-existing concept of this exhibition, as I try to emphasize the individual works of art in the context of the whole instead of contextualizing the presented artworks by thematic or formalistic similarities. The artists included in this exhibition: Melissa Gordon, Lieke Snellen and Nina Yuen have only been selected for the individual qualities of their works and coincidentally are part of the same exhibition.
Melissa Gordon (1981, USA)
Melissa Gordon's art practice generally deals with the construction of meaning of historical imagery and its assumptions, and most recently refers to American archival imagery from the 1930’s.
Gordon’s sculpture ‘Collage Construction (For Ben Shahn)’(2009) is a painted sculptural collage, based on two photographs made by the artist Ben Shahn for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930’s to document the sorrow of the farmers during the great depression in the US. The detailed and layered arrangement of the pictorial surface and the cut-out, house shaped structure of the sculpture seem to replace the original content of the photographs by a sentimental decorative aesthetic, referring to the rapid loss of original content of imagery.
The painting series ‘History Confounding History’(2009) depicts people working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930’s, based on archival photographs, juxtaposed by modernist brushstrokes after paintings by Morris Louis, Lee Krasner and Adolf Gottlieb. The works infuse two seemingly different histories, which actually derive out of the same crisis when these modernist painters were all working as Easel-painters. The Easel-painters project was also part of the WPA-program, providing a monthly salary for artists, who handed over their works to the government to counterbalance the problems of the crisis.
By exposing and restructuring these archival images in the medium of painting Gordon confounds certain assumed histories and questions their contemporary meaning.
Melissa Gordon was an artist in residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She has been included in ‘Dealing with Reality’ at Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, ‘Compilations III’ at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf and in the Prague Triennal in Prague. The artist held solo exhibitions at Galerie Michael Cosar in Düsseldorf and Ancient & Modern in London in 2006 and 2007 retrospectively. This year she will be included in the group exhibition “Rebelle: Art and Feminism 1969-2009” at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem and will have a solo exhibition at Marian Boesky Gallery in New York. In 2007 she was the recipient of the ABN AMRO Kunstprijs.
Lieke Snellen (1980, NL)
Lieke Snellen's sculptures, mainly composed of stacked furniture, appear to be the scraps of boredom of office workers after some late night drinks. By assembling different kinds of objects used as furniture, their original individual meaning of form balances in a delicate humorous manner into the context of their arrangement, referring to the architectural ideology of form and the human body.
The work 'Linoleum With Necklace'(2007) consists of a rolled linoleum carpet, placed vertically against a corner in the gallery space, pulled together by a string of beads.
The minimalist intervention of the necklace bends the most basic and unimaginative solution for floor covering into the surreal presence of an elegant and slim female form.
The red dot formed carpet, with an upside down chair and a rectangle, entitled ‘Across the Street’(2007) reminds of a holiday period at the office, when everybody puts their chairs on their desks to provide space for the vacuum-cleaner or less optimistic, reminds of the current economic situation in which many people clean their desks in order to never return again.
The work ‘Staete’(2008) consists of a little white box, divided by a large curtain with holes. It looks like a maquette marking the front view of a giant office building, juxtaposed by a detailed three dimensional view of its interior and recalls ideas of being locked up inside and want to be part of the beholders outside or vice versa.
Snellen’s most recent work entitled ‘Zucker Backer Style’(2009) is composed out of stacked white boxes, chairs, a mirror and miniature ice cup umbrellas, and appears as being an enlarged fancy cup filled with delicious vanilla ice, decorated with glittering sticks and colorful umbrellas, waiting to be eaten by a little girl wearing a summer dress and flip flops, whilst in the meantime the individual elements of the sculpture, such as the chairs and boxes, never lose their original meaning.
By simplifying the world at large and enlarging the simple and small with objects used in an environment of labor, Snellen questions the old and new meaning and associations of forms in relation to the medium of sculpture.
Lieke Snellen received a MA in fine arts at the Piet Zwart institute in Rotterdam and has had solo exhibitions at kunstcentrum Hengelo in Hengelo and De Nederlandsche Cacaofabriek in Helmond and has been included in several group exhibitions such as at Tent in Rotterdam and at the Veemvloer in Amsterdam.
Nina Yuen (1981, Hawaï)
Nina Yuen’s films are associative playfully composed assemblages of performances, collages and montages, usually revolving around a flux of imagery and spoken monologues merging personal and collective memory.
The film presented in this exhibition, entitled ‘Joan’(2009) connects the cruel death of the historical French woman Joan of Arc, who was burned alive on 31 May 1431 in Rouen after being accused of heresy, and the voluntary death of moths flying into light bulbs, after the poem ‘The lesson of the Moth’ by Don Marquis. The work evokes thoughts on living a meaningless life and die when you think the party is over or live a meaningful life without any influence on how or when it ends. The film alternates scenes of a burning cut-out image of a woman hanging in the field, of cinders on a stick resurrecting into moths, and a performance of Yuen reenacting Joan of Arc, accompanied by a poetic voice over narrating on Joan and moths. The work is presented on a in white paper covered monitor, placed on a white floor surrounded by paper cut outs of moths and pop-up books used in her films, objectifying the process of Yuen’s art practice.
Nina Yuen is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and has been short listed for the Volkskrant Art Prize 2009.
Although I never intended to curate this exhibition, I paradoxically see several possibilities to connect the presented artworks by a theme. To start with the fact that all three artists coincidentally are women, born in the beginning of the 1980’s, their seemingly shared interest in found imagery and objects, their use of collage techniques to assemble their works, the direct or indirect reference of crisis and even the lie of the Cretan could be a frame of reference for the paradox that emerges in all of their works.
I am wondering why they have all these things in common; is it a generational thing? A general interest of female artists? Do they maybe read the same books? Or do they see the same shows? Is it the globalization of the art world that creates a common denominator? Is it probably me, who has particular interests which emerge when I look at art? Or is it simply not possible to emphasize the individual in the context of a group?
I don’t know the answer. The only thing I know is that I never curated this show,
said the curator of a group exhibition without a theme.