20/4/2007
Erik van Lieshout
Mass MoCA, North Adams
His provocative works treat sex, violence, politics, and commercial culture with equal humor, candor, and irreverence. The exhibition includes a selection of video and works on paper. The videos touch on the influence of hip-hop and the cultural exchanges between Holland and Ghana and the artist's own internal struggles with work and family.
Solo show
Erik van Lieshout is one of Holland's most prominent artists and his provocative works treat sex, violence, politics, and commercial culture with equal humor, candor, and irreverence. His MASS MoCA exhibition will include a selection of video and works on paper.
Trained as a painter, van Lieshout became well-known in the 1990s for his
expressionistic canvases and large-scale drawings which merge graphic images of
drugs and tough street culture with a variety
of figures from the media, ranging from Burka-clad women to Snoop Dogg. A
hip-hop sensibility permeates his work which shares an anti-establishment attitude,
expressing politically incorrect
sentiments and behaviors that reflect real but hidden fears and desires.
Making his first video for his band, van Lieshout found the medium an
excellent vehicle for his investigation of the
human psyche.
In his videos van Lieshout points his camera honestly and unflinchingly at the
day-to-day experiences of subcultures and
micro-communities that illustrate the attitudes and realities of
society-at-large. Placing himself at the center of his videos, van Lieshout
uses his own experiences and relationships to explore
the complex psychology of a culture grappling with issues of immigration, racism,
sexuality, and violence. Baring his own soul in ways that border on painful,
he manages to draw in the people he
encounters, drawing out unguarded thoughts and deeply personal reactions on camera.
It is a confessional style, the openness and honesty of which has few
precedents.
Work at MASS MoCA
The three videos on view at MASS MoCA - Larium (2001),
UP! (2005), and his new works (called Part 1 and Part 2), explore both
personal and political themes. Van Lieshout creates a particular viewing
environment
for each video using simple, unfinished materials. His constructions of
cardboard, tarps, duct tape, and plywood become intimate installations that involve
the viewer into the work. They
confuse the lines between personal and public space and mock the very idea of
polished museum galleries.
Literally breaking the bonds of the
museum, van Lieshout's earliest video on view, Lariam, will be screened within a
sea container located in MASS MoCA's front courtyard. In the video Van
Lieshout is in
Ghana, a former Dutch Colony, where he has signed up for rap lessons with a local
musician. Having taken the anti-malaria drug Lariam before traveling to Africa, van
Lieshout raps lines from the
information leaflet with a group of young Ghanians, most of whom cannot afford the
drug. An amusing look at the role of music in cultural exchange and
understanding, the work also raises serious
issues of race and power. Visitors will view the video seated on wooden
benches that recall of the cramped quarters of slave ships.
In
UP! (2005) the artist turns his probing camera on himself and gives viewers an
intimate view of his struggles with love, sex, work, and family. Nothing seems out
of bounds: emotional
exchanges with his mother, complaints of his nervous stomach, and revealing sessions
with his therapist are all recorded. His own instructions to the
cameraman to leave a particularly
personal discussion of his own sexual experiences out of the film are ultimately
ignored. By allowing himself to lose control, the artist invites viewers to do
the same and encourages us to
recognize within ourselves similar fears, desires, and questions.
New work to be shown
Part 1 and Part 2, the artist's most recent project, document his travels in
America from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and the New Mexico desert with
his friend and editor. Part 1 was first screened in the artist's
exhibition Guantanamo Baywatch at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.'
A new series of drawings made in the United States will also be on view.
Reminiscent of graffiti, the sketches impart a feeling of immediacy, the
results of a stream of consciousness outburst and a vigorous, almost athletic
drawing style. The twelve foot long drawings envelop the viewer in van
Lieshout's vision of a densely layered
America. A range of images, from the American flag, to a stripper, to a
spaceship, hint at the artist's own perspective as an outsider or alien.
About the Artist
Erik van Lieshout was born in 1968 in Deurne, The Netherlands. He studied at the
Academie foor Kunst en Vormgeving, Hertogenbosch and at Ateliers in
Haarlem. In 2006 van Lieshout was the subject of a major museum survey at the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam. The exhibition opens at the Kunsthaus Zurich in April 2007 and then
travels to the Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. The artist has
exhibited throughout Holland and
Europe and has had solo exhibitions at the Institut Nerlandais, Paris, and
the Groninger Museum, Groningen, both in 2004. His work was included in the
Gwangju Biennial in South Korea and
the Fourth Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art in 2006. In 2003 the artist
represented Holland in the national pavilion in the Venice Biennale. His work is in
the collections of the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam, and the Museum Boijman van Beuningen, Rotterdam, among others. He
was awarded the Jordaan van Heekprijs for painting in 2004. He currently lives and
works in Rotterdam.
Opening april 21, 2007
MassMoCA
87 Marshall Street - North Adams