Lorelinde Verhees at P/////AKT

Artist: Lorelinde Verhees

Exhibition title: Daisy Chain

Venue: P/////AKT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Date: March 19 – April 16, 2017

Photography: Charlott Markus, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and P/////AKT, Amsterdam

Lorelinde Verhees is interested in the way the meaning of an object is established as well as the different phases in which that happens. Imagery, or the image itself, plays an important role here as a reflexive instrument. She uses assemblage and montage to establish connections between things that are dissimilar and to make these connections visible, often in the form of installations, through self-made and appropriated objects, sculpture, video and images.

What is the relation between ‘the thing’ and the context in which it appears, and how do they mutually influence and alter each other? The investigation of things in a state of change and laying bare their interdependent connective patterns are central themes within the presentation at P/////AKT. The exhibition space is thus conceived as a specific context as well as a model for a changing-space in which these relations and forms in alteration are being researched.

The word daisy stems from the Old English dæges-eage, literally meaning the day’s eye. The chain refers to being connected as well as bound; it symbolises the involvement of the context – in this case also the utopian thinking of the 60ies – through which the things appear, both despite and owing to this context, and obtain meaning in the now, the current moment of appearance.

Verhees approaches the things from a circular perspective, and the installation at P/////AKT serves as an entire piece that in turn forms a context for several individual works. The relations of the things towards each other play an important part; new connections occur between dissimilar matters that seemed to be previously unconnected. The things themselves function both as (thinking) models and more concrete subjects that fascinate her. From the notions of a changing space, energy and the body, training and unprepared action, survival, falling and surrender she asks herself how underlying patterns relate to the visible, tangible objects in our zeitgeist in a moment of change.

Lorelinde Verhees, Daisy Chain, exhibition view at P/////AKT, Amsterdam

Lorelinde Verhees, from front to back: Untitled, ropes, jerrycans, 2017; Wall painting, grid, with figures (after Robert Crumb) and objects, 2017

Lorelinde Verhees, from front to back: Groundhouding – fundamental attitude, photograph b&w, 2017; Untitled, framed drawing, 2016; Wall painting, grid, with figures (after Robert Crumb) and objects, 2017