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26/7/2008

Karin Arink

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schiedam

From 27 July to 12 October, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam presents States of Self, a retrospective exhibition of work by Karin Arink ( Delft, 1967). This solo presentation displays photos, sculptures, (spatial) drawings and animations created in the past two decades. The comprehensive selection of the works visualizes both the diversity and the coherence of her work.

Karin Arink studied at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In 1992, she won the prestigious Prix de Rome for Sculpture with her textile figures. Her work is represented in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam by two photos with deliberate incisions: CutDressCutPhoto (green) (1999), CutDressCutPhoto (purple) (2000) and the textile sculpture entitled Party Animal (2005). Karin Arink's work focuses on the body that reveals or deliberately conceals itself, on the physical encounter with the other, and – since she herself has become a mother – on the body as a place for the other.

The work of Karin Arink is a visual investigation of what the domain of the ‘self' could possibly be. In this context, she does not see the ‘self' as a clearly delineated entity but rather as a tangle of influences and experiences. It is something that continuously changes, depending on the surroundings.

The body is regarded as the visible shell of the individual, the internal. It is what the ‘self' uses to manifest itself to the other. Although Karin Arink's figures do not evolve into real bodies, they do express all kinds of physical, mental, emotional and social aspects . Diverse media are used and researched for this purpose, such as cut and treated photographs , moulded, crocheted and sewn figures, spatial drawings made of textile and adhesive plastic, animations, and text works. Sometimes the titles of her works vary, with capitals or lower case letters, and form part of the artwork.

In the expressive X-pose (yourself to me) , dating from 2001, a life-size red letter X in the form of a female figure hangs invitingly in space. The distended body, with its frayed edges and openings, is a classic example of receptivity and fertility, even although it also evokes associations with violence and calls to mind notorious atrocities in works by painters such as Rembrandt and Francis Bacon. The animated film e xpand mumbag ! (2002) shows how a maternal body is stretched further and further to accommodate the other: motherhood as ultimate entwinement and infiltration.

‘Mumbag' is a concept thought up by Arink herself. Of course, the words ‘mum' and ‘bag' are easily recognized, while the word also has connotations with the English insult ‘scumbag'. For States of Self , Karin Arink realized a new installation especially for each exhibition area, including Claiming Space (for meeting you) (2008). Here, windows are applied as ‘frames' of a ‘motionless animation', by covering them with transparent foil.

Publication
The first monograph on the work of Karin Arink, comprehensively outlining the work of the previous two decades, will be published to accompany the exhibition. Karin Arink. States of Self comprises articles by Anne Berk, Petra Else Jekel and Wilma Sütö (curator of the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam) and is published by Veenman Publishers (144 pages, full colour, € 29.95, ISBN 978-90-8690-125-8). A special version will be published in a limited edition, with a cut photo.

Artist's Lecture
An Artist's Lecture will be held in the Museum at 15.00 on Friday 10 October

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
Hoogstraat 112, Schiedam Olanda

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