Anet van de Elzen / Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

Portrait Louise Bourgeois

by Robert Mapplethorpe  

1982, printed 1991

photograph, gelatine silver print on paper

37,5 x 37,4 cm 

Louise Bourgeois - the photo of Robert Mapplethorpe really tells best why I admire her. Her life and work are interwoven, she is the work and the work is her. But of course it is actually a portrait, which again is in line with my work.

Anet van de Elzen, 2014

The work she produces does not stand for Anet van de Elzen. ‘It won't give you a glimpse of the identity of the artist', says one of the authors of this book, Brian Catling. The work stands for the viewer. There is nothing in between, not even Anet van de Elzen. In fact she goes one step further: she dissolves in her work. For her it is simply the natural thing to do. Everything Anet van de Elzen is not in daily life, she is in her work. ‘What it is not is an everyday thing'. You will recognize it as how you, the onlooker, experience her work. It is not an experience that can be shared with others; you can talk about it, perhaps, but you cannot share the other's feelings. Whatever you see has a different meaning than what another sees in it. You need to look for the significance of this work in yourself, not in the artist. When she talks about it, she talks about the manifestation of the image and how it came into being, about the physical form it has taken, but not about the effect it produces.
Alex de Vries, part of his text 'The inner plumb line' in Un beso al cielo, retrospective catalogue of Anet van de Elzen 2004

Anet van de Elzen

Untitled

2012

B & W photograph, gelatine silver print

110 x 75 cm 
 

 

Anet van de Elzen

Taste - One of five senses

Performance at Fierce Festival in Birmingham 

2013

photo by Nils Kenninck

Anet van de Elzen (NL)

X

From Echo the Now

2014

30 second clip
www.anetvandeelzen.com