Aukje Koks is interested in the intersections between the visible reality and the world of ideas. With her works, she is able to dislocate the viewer’s perspective. To the viewer, reality and illusion are intermingled and it is no longer clear what is real and what is not. ‘What is a painting, which space does it inhabit and where does it stop?’ are just a few of the questions Aukje Koks asks herself.
Koks’ paintings incorporate a certain narrative and refer to each other through a repetition of forms. Her soft toned spaces are characterised by a sense of emptiness. However, her works also show a strong sense of an invisible, intangible presence, like an incident which has just occurred or an event that has gone unnoticed. Her paintings present an elusive atmosphere by making us conscious of what we cannot actually see.
Koks emphasizes that ideas are not immediately found between the artist and the outside world, but are created in the space of a studio, within a carefully constructed system. Her work does not derive from a concept, but from tangible translations and ‘rephrasings’ of that what surrounds her.
Her site-specific wall works sometimes expand out of the
space of the canvas or even her studio. In doing so, she shows us the boundaries
between reality and illusion, the visible and invisible. But by using symbols,
metaphors and elements of her daily life, Aukje Koks is able to maintain a tangible
link to the outside world.
BACK SPACE: MOUNIRA AL SOLH
The oeuvre of Mounira el Solh is multidisciplinary and moves between video, photography, installation, writing and painting. Her approach is not documentary but fictional, even fantastic. While transforming dramatic situations into ironical ones, she seems to be making conscious periodic parallells between socio-political issues and aesthetics. She frequently appropriates other artworks, and often metamorphoses into other characters and mainly fictional artists.
