Art Gallery O-68 shows work by Astrid Nobel (paintings and sculptures) and Charlotte Koenen (installations and photographs). 'Wassend Water' (Rising and/or Washing Water) is what connects these two artists. The rising tide line of the Wadden Sea (Astrid) and washing water in the wash houses from the previous century in France (Charlotte). Both artists work with the raw, natural qualities of materials, using colour and their properties with minimal interventions, such as bones and pigment for Astrid and wood and clay for Charlotte.
The work of Astrid Nobel (1983) consists of sculptures, installations and paintings of materials from the North Sea and the Wadden Sea. As a witness to the tide line, she observes and uses what stands out, changes or deviates in what the sea brings ashore and she looks for symptoms of extraction, pollution and (mass) mortality, but also for ways to portray the kinship with the landscape and the universe. She processes found materials that already contain a lot of knowledge and experience in themselves, in conjunction with scientific findings, (local) history and personal experiences. The works draw attention to both the seriousness of the climate crisis and the power and beauty of living nature. The works in this exhibition incorporate direct and indirect traces of animals that have lived in the area. From the first scratches in the sand of a newborn seal and victims of bird flu to fossil bones of land mammals that lived thousands of years ago. Most of the pigments in the paintings are made by the artist herself and are painted on the basis of seawater, the minerals of which continue to react to the humidity. Depending on the weather, the colours fluctuate and salt crystals become liquid and then solid again.
Astrid was educated at the Minerva Academy and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten Amsterdam. She did residencies at Flux Factory in New York, the Sichuan Art Institute in Chonqing, and recently at Het Lage Noorden in Marrum.
Driven by the question of how forms arise and develop, Charlotte Koenen (1992) creates large-scale installations, sculptural objects and (photographic) experiments. Her work moves between abstraction and documentation, capturing the traces of processes and investigating the relationship between matter, space and history. Recently, her practice has shifted to a social and architectural perspective, as can be seen in her project on ‘Lavoirs’, public washhouses built after the French Revolution where laundry could be done, often located near a river or spring. In her work, Charlotte makes the physical and social history of these washhouses tangible. Essential to her work is the balance between control and letting go, in which imperfection and transience are given a poetic value. Charlotte’s environment during her youth in France plays an important role. Just as in Astrid’s works, repetitive forms recur in the paintings and drawings, we see this in Charlotte’s woodcarvings.
Charlotte studied at the Academy of Fine Arts & Design, Maastricht and the Van Eyck Academy there. She makes research-art trips to Japan and is inspired by traditional Japanese crafts, such as washi paper and traditional architecture, which is visible in her works.