sehebenen
maartje fliervoet
30 oktober 2016 - 27 november 2016
Opening Sunday, October 30, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
. 4:30 PM lecture by Ilse van Rijn , art historian.
November 22, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM [cancelled – new date to follow soon]
lecture by Alena Alexandrova, cultural theorist
Guided by the 19th-century plaster death mask *La noyée de la Seine* or *l’Inconnue de la Seine*, Maartje Fliervoet presents an investigation in the exhibition ‘Sehebenen’ in which a wide range of connections are made. At the end of the 19th century , the mask sparked a cult of beauty. The woman to whom the face belonged was said to have thrown herself into the Seine out of heartbreak. Because of her beauty and serene expression, a cast of her face was allegedly made in the morgue. This Ophelia-like myth persists, even though she was later unmasked; because of her smile, the mask could never have belonged to a drowning woman.
The exhibition ‘Sehebenen’ is structured around four sections consisting of found source material and images/objects derived from it. Handmade books, shirts, cast correction marks, a tapestry, and other fabric fragments are distributed throughout the space of BRADWOLFF PROJECTS. The connections between all these elements could be interpreted as ‘fields of vision’.*
The mystery surrounding the death mask has yielded a fairly extensive literary output, including references by Maurice Blanchot and Rainer Maria Rilke. Fliervoet examines the egocentrism in texts that completely ignore the woman behind the mask. On the one hand, she is overvalued, but on the other, the self-interest of the writer who uses the myth for his own ideas plays a role.
In her work on Le Corbusier [Entropy, 2010], Fliervoet appropriates conventional perspectives of the male ‘creative’ force; in ‘Sehebenen’, this is done through the appropriation of manuscripts and correction marks by both Blanchot and Rilke. Both writers have contributed to the perpetuation of the myth of l’Inconnue de la Seine through idealization. Additionally, in ‘Sehebenen’, Fliervoet harks back to Paleolithic art as an early expression of the [mimetic] making process.
*“Sehebene” [‘field of view’, plural: ‘Sehebenen’] refers not only to a plane on which elements can converge, but also to the integration of various components, such as the intertwining of figure and background in a pattern. This German word appears in *Spätrömische Kunstindustrie* by Aloïs Riegl from 1901 – an ‘emancipatory’ study of late antique decorative art. In ‘Sehebenen’, this is translated as the merging of source material and other contributions.
Maartje Fliervoet has exhibited at, among others, A.VE.NU.DE.JET.TE Institut de Carton and Wiels CAC, Brussels, Grimmuseum, Berlin, Lokaal 01 Antwerp, Kunstverein Göttingen and SKOR, Amsterdam. She is a tutor in the ART and RESEARCH honours programme at the University of Amsterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. She recently completed a residency at the Frans Masereel Centre, where part of the work shown at BRADWOLFF PROJECTS was produced. Other residencies in which she has participated include: Air Berlin Alexanderplatz [2013], Wiels CAC [2010], and The Banff Centre [2005].
Maartje Fliervoet is the initiator of the recently founded Manifold Books [manifoldbooks.tumblr.com].
This exhibition was realized in collaboration with BRADWOLFF PROJECTS, the Art & Public Space Research Group [LAPS] of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.
With special thanks to: Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, LAPS, Frans Masereel Centre and the Mondriaan Fund.