Stigter Van Doesburg is pleased to present Island Bar, the fifth solo show at the gallery by Maaike Schoorel.
Maaike Schoorel’s work is based on her research into the human mind’s ability to perceive and understand the visual world. The subjects of her paintings appear at once recognisable and elusive. Using photographic source material of people, places and objects Schoorel compositions simultaneously appear and dissolve into the canvas.
Island Bar consists of a body of works which Schoorel initiated for her participation at the 20th Biennale of Sydney – The Future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed - and extended for her show in Amsterdam with new works based on the same content and geography.
In Sydney, Schoorel showed her works in a rundown space on Cockatoo island. On the flaking walls she dispayed a number of paintings exploring the history of the venue: from a penal colony to a raformatory and a prison to the tourist attraction it is nowadays. On Diver, for example, we see the outlines of the statue of a diver that dominates the waterfront, whereas Island Bar 11 flirts with the entertainment aspect that now prevails on the island. Emerging from the dark tones of Thunderbolt’s Wife is the figure of an Aboriginal woman, whose image comes from a photo dated around 1862.
As with all of Schoorel’s paintings, they reveal themselves in slow time. This perceptual aspect, the critical function the brain plays when perceiving an image or a memory, becomes a instrinstic part when viewing her works. The longer you look, the more they reveal; the more they reveal, the longer you look.
