Curated by Angelblood: The human face is an empty force, a field of death main, 24 January - 28 February 2004

Annet Gelink Gallery is proud to present the upcoming exhibition curated by Angelblood. Angelblood is a New York based band and art collective formed in 2000 by Rita Ackermann, Jess Holzworth and Liz Bougatsos. Angelblood creates collaborative artworks, distinguished by a combination of distinctive drawing and edgy collage. In all of it's various incarnations, Angelblood is characterized by a raw almost desperate approach to art and life. They consciously abandon order and choose to enter the labyrinth of today's life and experience. In their music as well as in their performances they are concerned with dark motifs and ritualized actions.

For this exhibition Angelblood invited artists to respond to a quote by Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), a visionary French actor, playwright, poet, visual artist and theorist. Artaud was seeking to go beyond the bounds of art and breaking down the barriers between life and art. With his idea of the "Theatre of Cruelty" he proclaims the endless ripping of of masks to reveal the passionately desired life behind  it. I f we are able to contain life in it's overwhelming abundance than it would only be through a total experience, an ecstasy, an excess. In Artauds "Theatre of Cruelty" language stops being representation, an image of something that exists outside itself and where it derivess it's meaning from.
In the quote Angelblood took that opens with the line "The human face is an empty force a field of death" Artaud is concerned with the notion of portraits. He  argues for  the human visage which hasn't yet found it's face and behooves the artist to find it. "Portraits as mixtures of poems and of written interjections and plastic evocations of elements taken from the material of human or animal forms. They must be accepted in the barbarity and disorder of their visual expression "which never concerned itself with art" but with the sincerity and spontaneity of their creative gesture". Thus an invitation to explore the boundaries of the portrait.

The artists Angelblood  has chosen are often close friends because their art is driven by these creative forces which locks them all together in an undefinable category of "the edge". The show will feature works by the following  artists. Rita Ackermann (1968) had a solo show in the Annet Gelink Gallery in 2000 including her drawings and paintings. Lizzi Bougatsos (1974) and Jess Holzworth (1972) used to work  together as artist- duo Boug & Worth, they make trashy, cranky collages, videos and murals. Bougatsos is the singer in the band "Gang Gang Dance" and makes work on her own. Brian Degraw (1974),  his paintings and installations owe much to music, especially early punk rock, yet also deals with issues of religion, drugs and icons of the white trash. Mark Gonzales (1968) is one of the most famous and respected professional skateboarders. In the early 1980's he started painting, he now is a respected artist, working in graffiti, sculpture, film, painting and poetry.  Richard Kern (1954), in the eighties, he produced a series of short films that now are recognized as the central works of the movement now known as the Cinema of Transgression. In the 90's he switched to photography full time . Harmony Korine (1974) broke through as the script-writer of Larry Clarke's controversial film 'Kids' and directed the films 'Gummo' and 'Julien Donkey-boy', he showed photographs in The Bakery in 2000 His frayed images of people on the fringe of society, of American white trash are offensive, sad, poetic and stony at the same time. Justine Kurland (1969) is a photographer, while living with different rural Hippy communes she portrayed these hippies by asking them to pose naked in the landscape, like innocents in the garden of Eden. Inez van Lamsweerde (1963) and Vinoodh Matadin, important sources of inspiration for their work are the feasibility, perfection and above all the construction of bodies, identity and gender.  They often use the idealized feminine images of the mass media and manipulate them. Mario Sorrenti (1971) started documenting his life through photography at the age of 18, he is also  a successful fashion photographer. Andro Wekua (1977) employs a mix of different techniques to build up a world of  images through it's richness of visual detail and surprising aesthetics cannot leave the spectator indifferent.