Elsemarijn Bruys - ‘WRAPPING NOTHING’
Logic is lacking when space is created for the imaginary. A transformed version of reality emerges.
Contour Gallery has invited Elsemarijn Bruys (1989) for a residency in July and August 2022. This is the first time that we are completely handing over the space. Bruys will take over the exhibition space and create a presentation that is unique to her and to us. Visitors will literally and figuratively be immersed in her work; expect grotesque sculptural works that stimulate your senses. This exhibition promises to be an exceptional experience!
In this residency, Bruys investigates the aesthetic field of deepening, concealing and vacuuming. It becomes a journey of discovery into content, emptiness, residual space, or the lack thereof, in which she transforms and abstracts everyday forms and objects. Bruys has been working with this method for some time; it allows her to create a different version of the known through new forms, and with it her own reality. This can also be seen in her earlier series: Puffs.
The human urge for aesthetics will again play an important role in this project. Bruys confronts the viewer by creating an uneasy tension between material and form, in which beauty and disgust alternate. What do visibility, space and anti-space do to an object? How do these relate to each other and to the environment, and what does that do to our interpretation? As the art historian Walter Pater stated: life should be lived intensely, always in search of a new perception of the ideal of beauty.
On September 4, 2022, during the start of the new cultural season and the Art Central Rotterdam event, there will be a festive opening where the end result of Bruys' residency will be presented.