PRESS RELEASE FOR THE EXHIBITION "TRUST ME" (JULY 2009, HAPPENSTUDIO BERLIN)
In the works of Marije de Wit art materials and abstract forms co-exist with found objects from everyday life.Once combined in sculptures, installations and photographs, these different elements pierce right through the spheres of the autonomous, the functional and the decorative and capture each other in a playful game of display, always bringing about the question who is showing who.
Combining sculptural elements and abstract forms with objects from everyday life gives the artist a chance to combine art-elements with things we are all familiar with.
This pulls the abstract forms out of the sphere of just being artworks, which is important to the artist: Looking at these works, we are not looking at works that only exist in a hermetically closed world which is only accessible with information of the artist:
These works are not puzzles having to be solved. Ideas are not secretly hidden in any of them, ideas more likely hang in the air around the works. The materials combined are not symbols for anything behind them: They represent themselves, questioning and commenting each other and the world they come from.
An important recent work is a small yellow abstract sculpture holding pieces of green corduroy, combined with a vase with flowers. Both elements are placed together on the same pedestal. Treated in the exact same way like this, they make us wonder which one the artwork is here, and which one is its entourage.
In order to stress the sensory experience the work originates from and considering the way this and all other installations are best received, Marije de Wit named this work Sontag. After author and philosopher Susan Sontag, in who’s article “against interpretation”, although written in 1963, for the artist lie all the possibilities for the future.