Vanitas: Duy Quoc Vo

Quoc’s vanitas portrait is an allegory in a the most classical tradition of vanitas. The blonde youth with a flower wreath on his head is a classical symbol for spring, summer, youth and life itself. In summer, however, as in life, there is always the moment in which the sun has reached it’s peak and the seasons, or again life, move towards winter, or death. Quoc elegantly captures the moment in which youth realises it’s mortality. The portrait turns darker, the closer you come near it. The flowers are already starting to decay and the youthful blonde face is showing the first traces of a skull.
The sadness of the face in realising the approaching fall and winter also hints at a broader vanitas theme, both pagan and Christian, that we should not spend the summer (of our life) playing and giving into our senses, but that we should work (or be pious) to profit in winter (in death, the afterlife).

Vanitas: Isolde Woudstra

Isolde’s works touch several sides of the Vanitas theme.
In a Polaroid picture we see a giant pile of discarded plastic and wrapping material in front of a large Gucci advertisement, which is persuading us that we need those products in order to have a full, happy life. The contrast with the garbage reminds us of the short lifecycle fashion has and therefore the utter uselessness of it all. In true spirit of the theme: shallow focus on appearance brings no happiness.
In another photo we see a cold slab of marble and ants removing the final remnants of something, reminding us that nature will leave absolutely nothing of us on this earth after we have shed our mortal coil, only the good we have done and what we have built.
The image of a woman with a curtain draped over her head is a nod to Magritte’s ‘L’invention de la vie’ from 1928 which showed the fragility of life visually by taking away someone’s identity by wrapping cloth over our heads, which is also a reference to death shrouds. This fragility of identity or being is very cleverly underlined by the girl blending or disappearing into the curtains because of her tattoos and the pattern of the fabric

Vanitas: Tove Everstijn

Tove’s work for the Vanitas exhibition is a powerful comment on vanity, which in itself is literally derived from vanitas. It means that putting too much effort in something as shallow and superficial as appearance is completely ‘in vain’ , or in other words: wasted effort.
The classical point that was made, was that only the effort put into living virtuously would pay off (towards getting into heaven). The modern remnant thereof is of course that real beauty is on the inside, not the outside.
Tove’s portraits make this point in reference to the absurd amount of effort and suffering contemporary women put into their appearance, especially through plastic surgery. This form of self mutilation hardly ever makes someone look prettier and all to often leaves someone scarred and looking less beautiful and with less character and identity.

VANITAS

An exhibition about vanity, life, death, the use(lesness) of it all, superficiality and many more contemporary and classic interpretations of this powerful theme in art

enter: Space

Katrien Franken, Sabrina van den Heuvel, Annika Keijser, Sandder Lanen and Karol Lasia will all show their vision of the space around us and man's relation to it. The exhibition is the second in this year's exhibition programming in collaboration with Streetlab_

Enter:Space portrais our surrounding, tangible or not, as the leading character in photo and video work.

How does man influence the landscape or atmosphere around him? How do surroundings influence man? What do surroundings or atmosphere, visible or not, reveal about human presence? All these questions centre around a non human subject that says everything about our humanity.

An ambitious theme, that was tackled with beauty and certainty by a younger generation.
You are cordially invited to the exhibition opening on friday 23/4 between 20.00 and 00.00 at Streetlab_Projectspace, Postjesweg 2 Amsterdam

EAT THIS!

An exhibition about the subconscious power of imagery, the things we say by arranging them and the effects created by adding something to play to our natural instinct: Food

Elza Jo, RVDL, Ashkan Honarvar & Tove Eversteijn



A collage (From the French: coller, to glue) is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole.

All images have subconscious values each of us have built up over the years through what we have been taught, what we have seen and the emotions attached to the experience with such a subject. When we rearrange these images to form a new image, we are also assembling the subconscious values attached to the used images. In creating these new images we can use these values to either strengthen themes or to create confusion.

In this exhibition the artists have gone one step further by adding an extra ingredient to the visual and subconscious soup: Food. Food and sweets have such a powerful biological programmed reaction in our mind and body, that they prove powerful tools in strengthening themes or in creating confusion. Either way, the viewer of the collages will feel their subconscious stirred by these surreal new images.