Mirthe Klück
Moon White Rabbit
24.10 - 27.11.2021
Imagine someone wants to show you the moon by pointing a finger at it. The index finger guides your gaze; without that index finger, you might never have noticed the moon.
It is easy to miss the moon; during an ordinary day you miss so many things. That is why the index fingers that cross your path are important - they help you see the moon for yourself. When you see the moon, you feel in the moment, in the pinnacle of the now. But beware: if you shift your focus back to the index finger, you will lose that feeling. Never take the finger for the moon.
The practice of artist Mirthe Klück can be understood in a similar way. Her works are visually distinct from each other, but they are all careful exercises in attention. An artist may initially have an idea for a work of art, but the work itself can transcend this. Does the maker then perceive this moment when the work truly becomes the work? And can the viewer observe their surroundings more consciously? This kind of mindfulness requires time. In her first solo exhibition at Fred & Ferry Gallery, Klück invites visitors to take it.
In her works, Klück plays with the often fragmentary, flawed perception of everyday scenes, details from mass-produced products and icons from the so-called collective memory. Her visual elements and repetitive patterns seem familiar, yet unfamiliar at the same time. The carefully considered references and combinations of materials evoke free associations that, almost paradoxically, can co-exist. On the one hand, they question perception and attention span; on the other, they offer alternative narratives, multiple possible realities. This experience of an unraveling reality, or truth, is key.
The 'Toothpaste'-paintings seem to refer to the classic Colgate tricolour toothpaste. But also the Pepsi logo is somehow related to the marks thrown onto and scraped off the canvas. And what other symbols quickly flicker before our eyes? Or are these marks birds? Does the title 'Still Life' hint at something else? Where Klück usually starts from a material-technical idea, the work overtakes the meanings, the ways in which it can be mentally be read. Klück allows that; she lets go of control and makes room for the accidental and intuitive.
In that sense she often also moves away from painterly tradition. She discovers and disrupts parameters of the medium, such as carrier, paint and representation. Earlier work was made with acrylic, gesso, (metal) lacquer, oil paint, resin, rags, polystyrene foam, rubber, latex and jute. For one of the works on display, she 'painted' with the unusual polyester.
Klück sees the canvas connected to the ubiquitous screen through their literal superficiality. For the work 'Horses', for example, she took pictures of the television broadcasts of the equestrian disciplines at the 2012 Olympic Games. These images are shown in a publication and as framed works. The prints of photos from a television screen form an accumulation of surfaces and layers. By continuously translating the image into a new medium, colours and shapes are also further abstracted.
In addition, with each reworking, the absurdity of people on horses jumping over obstacles becomes more apparent. It is a characteristic tension between sentiment and dryness, between the light-hearted rhythm of compositions and the undramatic content, which Klück seeks out. Influences of kitsch and pop art subtly shine through - as she herself agreed, "if you can't be cheesy, you can't be free".
Moreover, Klück approaches painting in a sculptural way: she is interested in the spaciousness of the surface; the cavity of the painting, between wall and canvas. What image is behind the image? What happens when the contrast between a graphic line and the background against which it is defined disappears? For the screen prints she made based on the wrapping foil of a chocolate Easter bunny, she removed the black lines from the drawing. Together with the enlarged scale, this results in a flattened, distorted representation. She then abstracted the actual chocolate figures in the packaging again for new sculptures.
These works came about because of Klück's fascination with and recent steps in ceramics. She sees this as an extension of her practice: in ceramics, a small bowl is a hollow basic form, just like the canvas of the painter, with an aesthetic value, on which different layers are applied that influence each other, but without being able to know in advance exactly to what end result. It involves creating the conditions in which the work can arise. In ceramics, this is done using age-old firing techniques and various glazes that add seemingly abstract expressionist patterns to the objects. What is even more, ceramics are closer to reality than painting: for example a Jun glaze approximates the molecules in the air that scatter light, making it always more direct than the most sky-blue paint.
For these sculptural hares in specific, Klück made white, hollow casts, which she glazed with celadon. Celadon is very similar in colour to the gemstone jade. The jade hare is also a story of poets from the Han dynasty, the first golden age of China, according to many, in the two centuries before and after Christ. It tells the story of how a monkey, an otter, a jackal and the hare were tested for their virtue. A figure posing as a spiritual person asked the animals to bring him food. The monkey, otter, and jackal brought him the food they had actually gathered for themselves. But because the hare ate only grass, he could offer nothing but himself, whereupon he jumped into the fire. The figure was so moved by the self-sacrifice that he extinguished the fire and immortalized the face of the "selfless hare." He painted it on the moon.
Eline Verstegen, October 2021
With the support of STROOM The Hague , FLACC Genk, the Jaap Harten Fonds and Stichting Stokroos.
