Artspeak
Emmeline De Mooij
Emmeline de Mooij was born in Delft, The Netherlands, in 1978 but today lives and works between Amsterdam and New York. Her work consists of a mixture of performance, photography and installations and deals with evolutionary biology, humanity in relation to nature and the often ambivalent frontier between freedom and chaos. She has studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam) and is currently completing her MFA at Bard College. She has had solo exhibitions at Villa Nouailles (Hyeres, France), Steinsland/Berliner (Stockholm), Salone del Mobile (Milan), Tsumori Chisato (Paris), Daegu Photo Biennale (Korea), Capricious Space (New York), and Motive (Amsterdam). de Mooij has participated in group exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Museum Nacht Rotterdam, Robert Berman (Los Angeles), Art Cologne (Germany), and YK3 (Melbourne), among others. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Museum Paper, Purple Magazine, Dazed and Confused, GLU magazine, Dagens Nyheter, YKKY, and Volkskrant.
Exhibitions
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EMMELINE DE MOOIJ, MICHAEL DUMONTIER, ANDREA HELLER, MINA TOTINO, UNTIL WE HAVE A HELICOPTER, DANIEL G. WONG
November 17–January 12, 2013
Bringing together six international and Canadian artists, As Far as I Can See contemplates a theme of running away from home. The exhibition investigates the metaphorical space of running away—the lost, explorers and wanderers, and meandering thoughts and dreams—and the physical act of escape—traversing other worlds, ghostly creatures, the dark forest, and the unknown. The exhibition presents both a voyage provoked by the imagination and the beacon that brings us home.
Among the works included is Cloud Studies by Mina Totino (Vancouver), an ongoing series of Polaroid photographs of clouds taken since 1997. Marked with a date, time and occasional anecdotes, the Polaroids reference both the idle pursuit of cloud watching and the transcendent nature of the sky. As a sobering counterpart to Totino’s clouds, Michael Dumontier (Winnipeg) presents a series of foil-stamped books in which the sky is grounded by uniformity and repetition. While no photograph is alike in Cloud Studies, Dumontier presents a scenario in which the intangible sky suddenly feels defined and decisive.
In her 2011 work Hello Trouble, Emmeline de Mooij (Amsterdam) subtly points to the dark and foreboding aspect of fleeing. Composed of plastic, burlap, mud and fabric, the work insinuates a welcoming of the ominous, underlining the possibility that despite the potential for danger, running away breaks us from the confines of the ordinary. The desire to explore the uncharted extends to Daniel G. Wong’s (Lethbridge) work, Are You Wild Are You Free (2012). Wong’s practice is an exploration of wonder, mystery, and poetry in everyday living. He embarks on adventures to immediate and faraway surroundings, wandering to encounter the mundane and remarkable. Wong produces meditations on his findings, questions, and discoveries in the form of zines, posters, and blogs, and his work in this exhibition is generated from recent excursions in Iceland.
Inspired by the memories of her childhood, Andrea Heller (Paris/Zurich) creates a sombre universe populated by creatures and shadows. The playful aura in her work is juxtaposed with suggestions of gloom and abyss. Heller’s work examines the forest as hiding place, incorporating elements of mischief, cheerfulness, and humour. This excursion to the edge of the woods is met with Beacon For The Moonshined Wanderer (2009) by Vancouver-based collective Until We Have A Helicopter, a work comprised of a collection of antique lanterns suspended by rope. The work hangs from the window of the gallery, acting as the destination and departure point for those that stray and the ones that return.
Postscript 49: Sheryda Warrener on As Far As I Can See (PDF)