Annet Gelink Gallery is proud to present A bee’s wing dropping onto your cheek, a group exhibition that celebrates the first collaboration with Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (CN). On view are new works by Rinella Alfonso, Leo Arnold, Minne Kersten, Josse Pyl and Vanguard’s guest artists Jin Haofan and Chen Xingye.
The gallery’s main space is filled with paintings and drawings from these young artists, with a delicate printed work welcoming the visitor at the entrance.
At the time of altering seasons, the works in this exhibition mark the in-between moments of a transition, depicting objects that oscillate between life and lifeless. Ghosts get down in wooden chairs, carcasses pop up in eerie drawings, moths fly towards their death and bees lose their wings. Similarly, inert objects come to life, with lines transcending into dancing eyelashes and windows and crevices drawing the viewer into a dark and unknown inside.
Uncanny at first sight, the works in fact do not propose a bleak view on life. Rather, they seem to suggest a poetic moment of letting go to allow something new to grow, much like the vibrant spring following wintertime. These elements of nature are also reflected in the works, in the form of an ironing comb in flames or a gentle stream of water pouring out of a fountain.
Bodies in this exhibition are fragmented, the closest to a body intact being a headless figure. These dispersed body parts correspond to the senses: teeth jump across drawings and make language tangible, a foot is fetishized, and moths are fatally attracted to light.
The wing of a bee dropping onto a person’s cheek from one centimeter distance is the absolute threshold for an organism to experience touch. Painting, a medium typically associated with looking, here becomes of the senses, raising questions about the act and experience of looking itself.