​Lily van der Stokker, Jacques André

27​.​AUG​.15​

Artist talks by:

Jacques André (7 pm)

​Lily van der Stokker (8 pm)

On Thursday, August 27th, NICC has the pleasure to invite you to an evening with artist talks by Jacques André and ​Lily van der Stokker.  Special thanks go out to Etablissement d’en face for their support in organising Jacques André’s talk, succeeding his recent solo exhibtion, succeeding his recent solo exhibition, titled “3,50€”  at Etablissement d’en face in Brussels. Nicc is able to host artist ​Lily van der Stokker through the generous financial support of Beaufort2015 who is currently commissioning a significant public work of Lily van der Stokker at the Beglian coast.

Dutch artist Lily van der Stokker has been making bold, colorful large-scale wall paintings for more than twenty years. The artist applies colors ranging from soft pastels to bright fluorescents—sometimes in playful and visually arresting plaid patterns or all-over flower motifs—to amorphous soft-edged forms that inhabit the space like friendly oversized visitors. Witty texts added alongside van der Stokker’s forms complicate their first impression as the cartoony doodles of an adolescent or mere decorative ornamentation. Invoking the platitudes of polite society with expressions like “Best regards” or “Wonderful” or touching upon the realities that impact all our lives, from love to money to aging, with phrases like “Transfer the money to me” or “Only yelling older women in here, nothing to sell,” van der Stokker makes evident the power dynamics at work within seemingly innocuous spaces. Van der Stokker argues for the role of pleasure in aesthetic experience, finding alliances between beauty and intellect, playfulness and criticality.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Jacques André has been creating a conceptual work that questions our consumption habits and our relationships to material goods and ownership. To this end, he has adopted ways of working that do not follow traditional artistic practices. One of those methods, for instance, consists in buying things repeatedly from second-hand shops or over the Internet. The main idea is to acquire all the possible copies of certain items, such as records or books. The items generally have in common that they were produced in the seventies and each of them in its own way conveys the ideology of that time. For example, you will find in the artist’s installation presented at Artissima 08, various editions of Wilhelm Reich’s book devoted to The Sexual Revolution. You will also see some vinyl LPs by German Krautrock bands, such as Can’s I Want More, or one of Neu !’s three eponymous albums. In addition, a puppet from Jim Henson’s famous Muppet Show is also on display…
By purchasing compulsively such objects that are so symbolic on the cultural level, and above all, by turning them into readymade-like artworks, the artist intends to express the paradoxes inherent in our western society. A society wishing to model itself, in the post-1968 era, on a new kind of freedom but which, instead of putting this into practice, eventually subjected it to conceit.