OPENING: Saturday 7 September, 5 - 7 pm
'Blue Ray One' is the first solo exhibition by Frederique Jonker at Galerie van Gelder. This is twofold, almost like a situationist paradox. In one room the paintings are situated in an evocative installation with light effects and in another room the paintings are surrounded by silence and are presented autonomously in a white cube.
For Frederique Jonker, listening to music while she is working is an indispensable element. It functions as a catalyst to evoke images; to be sent, even. In this context she receives messages that she calls 'transmissions'. It is essential to such a degree that in her presentations she likes in some way or the other to continue that positive push by connecting her paintings with the energy of rappers' music she listens to. She does this in the form of installations with moving image projections and stroboscopic bright lights on her canvases. This means that her paintings are in a different situation than is usual. They temporarily get a different life, or maybe a next life. It is a layering that the paintings themselves also have. Each painting consists of an embryonic phase. Before a painting on canvas begins, a base layer of drawings and words is applied. This works as a dynamo in the next stage of painting.
On a canvas, she first draws cyborg-like figures accompanied by individual words and fragments of sentences that she receives as 'transmissions'. For example, a sentence like 'Buy a can of yogurt and eat it' may end up in her head, even though she does not like yogurt at all. The 'self' becomes more excluded and in line with this she says that she strives for "automatic painting".
In summary, her energy-charged work seems to be driven by an extraordinary sensitivity of her 'controlled hand'.
In addition to her painting and drawing work, she has been composing computer-generated music since early 2024.