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10/4/2002

Vanessa Jane Phaff

Laurent Delaye Gallery, London

Little Red Riding Hood

Dutch artist Vanessa Jane Phaff produces figurative images based upon fictitious narratives. Using various mediums including linocut, acrylic on canvas and silkscreen her paintings - as she describes them - are populated by young, knowing, and often disturbing adolescent characters. Phaff depicts children, predominately female in gender, in a linear graphic format in which the body and its environment fuse in a flat iconic design.
The unfixed and often unsettling nature of her work is compounded in a pictorial space where childhood innocence and adult worldliness collide in the lithe bodily articulations and sober domestic interiors.
Although Phaffs work often includes scenes of death, suicide and disability it is usually infused with a sense of irony and humour. For example in II faut nettoyer sa maison, 1996 we find a young girl at home in a wheelchair. Surrounded by domestic accoutrements in the family lounge the sullen faced girl attempts to vacuum the carpet whilst accidentally knocking over furniture. In another image Klara, 1997 a well-dressed girl hovers outside a log cabin on crutches accompanied by a large black dog. The flower-lined window of the house suggests a safe home although much like the Clara character in the Heidi TV series she seems uncomfortable in her privileged attire. In Phaffs image we catch the girl in what appears to be a state of limbo, on her own, perhaps contemplating her approaching adult life and burgeoning sexuality.
In her new show at Laurent Delaye Gallery the artist has taken as her starting point the well-known childrens story Little Red Riding Hood. Pursued by the terrible wolf Riding Hood cunningly escapes the fate of her elders in an innocent yet surreal chain of events. Riding Hood is depicted in a stark linear form akin to her architectural or landscape setting. This method of working flattens the picture plane giving the works an almost symbolic visual language. Like road signage the images direct the viewers attention to an ambiguous subtext. Using black and red Phaff draws the viewers attention towards symbolic elements running through the multiple images. For example in one print RRH is pictured standing on a table in a room with a violent perspectile vanishing point sharing its apex with the girls lower abdomen. This same red line crops up repeatedly in other images appearing to designate the limits of pictorial space as well as suggesting linkages between RRH, and her violent pursuer. This is perhaps best illustrated in her image of trees marked by a strong red band silently awaiting their immanent cull.

Solo exhibitions: Vanessa Jane Phaff, Reuten Gallery, Amsterdam; Sally Cant See, 1-20 Gallery, New York, 2000 (catalogue); Vanessa Jane Phaff, Reuten Gallery, Amsterdam, 2000/1998/1997.
Group exhibitions include: KABOOM, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA; The Peoples Art, Centrale do Freixe, Porto, Portugal; Girl, The New Art Gallery, Walsall, 2000; Inmo Gallery, LA International, Los Angeles, 1999; Examining Pictures, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London/Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago/Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Centre, Los Angeles; Terugblik (89-99), Willem de Kooning Academy, Kunsthal, Rotterdam.

Image: Vanessa Jane Phaff, Little Red Riding Hood 2001, Silk-screen print on canvas, 41 x 29cm

PRIVATE VIEW: THURSDAY 11 April 2002 - 6.30 - 8.30pm

Opening Times: Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm Saturday 10am - 4pm

Laurent Delaye Gallery
11 Savile Row London W1S 3PG UK
Telephone: +44 20 7287 1546 Fax: +44 20 7287 1562

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