Iris van Dongen
Spleen
September 9, 2004–October 16, 2004The Breeder, Athens
The Breeder is happy to announce the first solo exhibition of Dutch artist Iris van Dongen in Athens.
By no means does the work of Iris van Dongen steer clear of gloomy
Romanticism. In recent years she has been producing drawings several meters
in height, these having a certain inescapable quality due to their size
alone. Though Van Dongen’s work comes about mainly in an intuitive manner,
the theme ‘human tormented by demons’ seems to keep cropping up. For that
reason it often has a melancholic or malicious undertone.
The women depicted have a far-away look, because Van Dongen sees them as
something abstract, as though they are figures from mythology.
“Although the drawings refer to earlier movements in traditional art, there
is always a small element, such as the sweatband with the skull on it, which
shows that it is from the present day: a symbol from a contemporary
subculture and, at the same time, an age-old symbol. This gives extra
emphasis to the aspect of mortality or melancholy – or neutralizes it. The
opposites that I juxtapose with each other – ‘good and evil’, ‘past and
present’, and, literally, the ‘figurative’ and the ‘abstract’ should give
rise to confusion about the limits of these contradictions.”
In this way the surroundings in the drawings of the ‘angels of death’
symbolizes her psyche, as a mirror of her soul, and seems to haunt her, even
though she has resigned herself to the fact that it is she who is haunting
herself.
Iris van Dongen, is participating in upcoming shows in The Royal Academy of Arts ( London ) and in Cosmic gallery in Paris.
