my graphic art on Modern Abstract Art online
The objects, part 1
The world appears to us in objects. They may be complex or very simple. Together they sing the great song of reality as we experience it. Among the great mass of objects there appear to be primal objects. These objects are the ones that have been used by humankind for tens of thousands of years, even in very early cultures that existed unbeknownst to each other. One such primal material is stone as the basis for building houses. The circle, in either symbolic or practical sense, is another. The gate, invented to carry bulk and thus create a passage through a wall. Nets, knives, axes and spear points also belong to this group of objects. These basics are often found in historical excavations as well as in modern time digs.
Hilly van Eerten consciously chooses these basic objects to work with. In her Monotypes series she very clearly demonstrates her choice, the roof tile playing a leading role in one of them. This series shows her fascination with gently sloping and repetitive ceramics and their practical uses: after all, the roof tile is a factory made object designed to shield a house from falling water. This is why the roof tile is shaped in such a way that it may easily be joined to another to close a gap. All of these characteristics are clearly visible in the series. In a different series of Monotypes she uses photographs she’s taken of patterns of paving tiles and bricks. These graphics not only focus on the material, the stone, but also on the various patterns in which the stone has been laid. In these Monotypes we can see the purposely arranged patterns of streets and pavements laid by bricklayers. All of her chosen elements have one thing in common: they are easy to produce. They are only one step in the industrial transformation process: from clay to baked brick, from clump of rock to hewed stone, from iron ore to moulded iron.
It seems as though Hilly van Eerten intuitively looks for the simplest transformations. In her work we can see the solidified work human kind has always been active in: baking, hewing, forging, moulting, moulding.
As though she wants to take us, the public, back to the very matter the earth is made of, and to its transformation into useful objects by human hands. In this sense her work creates a mythology of the human transformation of earth’s elements. They have always been a part of our history as it was brought to us through images of Earth Gods in stories, from the Greek and Norse sagas to Wagner’s Operas. She makes us stop and notice the primary existence of objects and, therefore their steadfastness, their stability. She stabilises the world, the ever flying, moving planet - life - by picking up and using ‘her’ primal objects in her graphic design.
Layers
The first layer in her work consists of picking up and using ‘her’ primal objects almost in that same motion however, she visually taints them. She does not just depict!
The tainting or crushing of the objects is done in the same tough, basic way, as they were created. There is a visual – almost tactile – pushing and shoving. The grain is tainted, it is varied, the thing itself broken, split apart or halved. A physical concrete mill seems to be turning; it is all visual labour that imitates the difficult production process or repeats it from which the objects came. It is no coincidence she uses lithographic technique, etching in copper, or the grain a witness to the process.
She almost always starts a new work with photographs she takes herself. She then chooses whether to Photoshop them or not. Then she copies the photos. This is where the disjointing transformation process usually begins. In this sense her work may be referred to as copy art. However, the physical photocopy disappears and its place is taken by a graphic print. Every print by her hand is therefore unique; ‘Monotype’ is a more appropriate name for her art.
Do we get to see twisted or fragmented objects because she unravels the world into pieces? It is too early to ask that question, because there are more layers to her work, more and more over the years. Almost all of van Eerten’s works have various layers. Some times two or three, other prints may even have six or seven. They can be viewed as layers of processing, layers that are visually stacked very tightly together within one print. The different layers have, as it were, been pressed together with great force so that all space between them has been removed. There is no depth or space in her work – contrary to what layered work is usually about. The squeezed together space in the interior body of the graphic print, brings out a labyrinthine effect: the layers interfere with each other. The result of all this visual labour is that the objects begin to escape their original form. While looking at her prints, our image of the solid ‘brick or tile’ shifts and sort of fades. The heavy, and in our experience, so common identity of the brick disappears. The image is less connected to its being.
Fons Heijnsbroek
©Translation, Emmy Muller, September 2008