Sylvie Zijlmans
dal 29/4/2006 al 8/7/2006
Segnalato da
29/4/2006
Sylvie Zijlmans
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
The Uninvited: recent work. She frequently uses photographic means. Still, her works can be better described as sculptural installations. Controlling doom is something of all time. It is a remedy against primal fears and a rich source of superstition and myth.
The Uninvited
With “The Uninvited", the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen shows recent work by artist
Sylvie Zijlmans. She frequently uses photographic means. Still, her works can be
better described as sculptural installations.
Controlling doom is something of all time. It is a remedy against primal fears and a
rich source of superstition and myth. With the exhibition ‘The Uninvited’ Sylvie
Zijlmans refers to this forgotten, magical undertow in our culture. She shows us
unexpected images that acquire a fairy-tale meaning by the way they render menace
and destruction visible. By lending an intimacy to the uncontrollable, it gains in
intensity. Sylvie Zijlmans joins photographic and sculptural images together and
integrates functional electrical parts in the work. In the monumental installation
‘Dawn’ (2006), which stretches across several walls, she makes a drawing with
hundreds of meters of supple black electrical cable, showing a few women dressed in
chadors. Not much of the women can be seen, they are almost completely covered by
the concealing dress. They do make the drawing visible: the uncovered parts of the
body are rendered in white neon that lights up the room. The cable that forms the
drawi
ng, provides the current for the neon lighting. To be enlightened means to be
visible. For Zijlmans, being enlightened is mainly a state of mind. The title ‘Dawn’
emphasizes this in a subtle and poetic way. It is the moment at which the first rays
of the sun chase away the nocturnal darkness.
Stockholm Syndrome
In ‘The Stockholm Syndrome’ (2000) a white polystyrene man is holding a
semi-transparent photograph behind his back, at the same time carrying the lights
and cables that are needed to make the image in the photo visible. The work derives
its title from the phenomenon that hostages, in their terror, start to identify with
their abductors as soon as the latter show signs of humanity. The stiff polystyrene
man is carrying a picture of a confused, running man who, in his turn, is carrying
cleaning products.
Tropical Storms
Sylvie Zijlmans brings us face to face with something awesome that is much bigger
than ourselves. In the series of works with names of recent tropical storms like
‘Katrina’, ‘Stan’, ‘Wilma’ and ‘Dennis’ from 2005 and 2006, Zijlmans shows the
perpetrator and the victim united in one image. Tropical storms are given a name in
order to make information about their development possible. Zijlmans uses these
names as titles for her latest works. On sheets, hanging loosely along the walls,
she shows larger than life depictions of adults and children, emerging from the
darkness, dripping with water. These photographs are breathtakingly sharp, and it
becomes clear immediately that something is wrong. They look like giants from an
uncontrollable, dangerous world.
Sylvie Zijlmans
The work of Sylvie Zijlmans (Amsterdam, 1964) can regularly be seen at the Tanya
Rumpf gallery in Haarlem. During the past years she has had exhibitions at, among
other places, the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, the Provinciaal Museum Hasselt, the
Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch, the Stedelijk
Museum Schiedam and the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Museumpark 18 - 20 - Rotterdam