Monique van Genderen - Dirty Water
15 March—19 April 2008
Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin
The Michael Janssen Gallery Berlin is proud to present the solo exhibition Dirty Water by Monique van Genderen. Large-scale paintings in high-gloss enamel paint on wood and expansive vinyl wall collages by the artist will be on view between 15th March and 19th April 2008, in addition to watercolours and gouaches, bound together in portfolios and tted into specially designed seating-sculptures.
”I want to change my work drastically, practically by the minute. And I want people looking at the paintings to keep up this pace with me. I never want to rely on the things that worked once, like a formula...”. Monique van Genderen belongs to a new generation of abstract painters but sees herself in the tradition of artists like Hans Hartung, Hans Hofmann and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The artist, who lives in Los Angeles, fuses 1950s abstraction with contemporary questions on place and context.
Van Genderen uses adhesive vinyl lm to create collages illustrating her visionary world directly on the wall. She deve- loped this technique as a result of experience gained during her time as a sign maker in the eld of exterior advertising in L.A. The artist has also transferred this technique to her painting, placing round and angular shapes on the canvas, which take the form of coloured or monochromatic signs, subsequently scoring lines through the vinyl with a knife as a subjective artistic gesture. These tangled lines revolve and snake their way between the surfaces. Van Genderen applies a mixed selection of nuanced oil shades to her canvas-covered wooden backgrounds. Her dark glazed works form a stark contrast to the colourful shapes and lines, which oat blithely here and there over the painted surface. She dilutes the varnish and applies it generously, like a watercolour, using paintbrushes, brushes and rollers. The glaze shimmers in layers, and matt and glossy varnish re ects the surrounding space in a fascinating play of light, lustre and depth, transforming the paintings into light sculptures.
Monique van Genderen creates a type of abstraction via her visionary language, with which she wishes to reveal “how we think and make connections. Not how we actually see the world”. If the observer follows the connecting threads which emanate from the exhibitions’ multi-faceted works, they will, inexorably, be initiated into the “non-linear and non-objective narrative” of the artist’s experience.
Irmgard Berner
Monique van Genderen, Dirty Water, Installation view, 2008, Galerie Michael Janssen Berlin
