On Tuesday, April 22, at 19:00, the GAK invites you to an artist talk with Monique S. Desto and Klaartje van Essen, who enter a practical material and aesthetic exchange in exhibition Erosion Arranged; we sink, I stretch, you flow.
The two artists share a particular sensitivity for the interaction between painting, sculpture, memory and space. Their works move from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional and back again, stretching, stretching and supporting and rubbing against each other. Monique S. Desto and Klaartje van Essen are also linked by their attitude towards the potential of material, which expands at certain moments under certain conditions and in certain places. Because the spatial conditions and the circumstances surrounding them are always different, the works also change. They change, but also because they are fragile and transient, condense and are then folded up again, rubbed to pieces or disassembled.
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Annette Hans
There is an interest in endlessness, no? Not in a contemplation sense, which could also be like an endless…
Klaartje van Essen
…gaze.
Annette Hans
Yes, the endless gaze to the image that kind of perpetuates itself in this other. It’s a different endlessness.
Klaarte van Essen
Something without a frame, basically. Or without a confined space.
Monique S. Desto
I don’t know, I like that the latex is decaying, that it’s more about the moment rather than having a painting where you kind of just assume that it’s going to be there forever. Same with the sculpture, I guess. To see that it’s only going to be like this now. And that’s, I think, what makes looking at it more precious, I guess. Having this time with this exhibition makes it special. Even with the Szenebild_ drawings that you can look at without getting to a point where you can really say, okay, now I know what I’m looking at. Maybe you just have to give up trying. I guess what I personally find interesting about time is that you set your own end point.
Klaartje van Essen
It’s really like a transformation over time. That is also the erosion process addressed in the title. Something going away over time, quickly enough that we can notice it as humans.
Monique S. Desto
But I mean, I am still taking photos, so it does stay in a different way.
Klaartje van Essen
Nothing is ever disappearing.
Monique S. Desto
Unless your USB stick breaks, which also happens. Because then it’s just files and data and also no security. With the next solar winds, the cloud is going to be destroyed.
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The two artists will talk about these and other topics with each other and in a conversation with the guests.
In English.
The event is part of the exhibition Erosion Arranged: we sink, I stretch, you flow.