Marthe Zink / Roger Raveel

Roger Raveel

Introspection

2002

oil, synthetic mirror glass, canvas

145 x 114 cm

With his right hand on his knee and a square mirror face, Raveel takes a sitting position in a space which exhales void. The blue plinth falls on both sides of the canvas and in this way goes into the space outside the painting. The square shape of the green edged mirror comes back into the framed white emptiness defined in the background. The work is called 'Introspection', Raveel’s right hand that painted on canvas, is prominently in the foreground. As a viewer, you are confronted with yourself by the mirror and you become part of the work. Raveel allows you to be part of his way of seeing things.

His work has many contrasts, for example, between organic forms like human figures and nature and geometric shapes. All have a different physical presence and a different approach in his way of painting. The observable reality is very important in his work, as well as the relationship between space and time in which matter is brought to life by the spirit.

Marthe Zink, 2015

Marthe Zink (NL)

Narcissus in Nowadays Society

2014

mixed media on paper

80 x 120 cm

www.marthezink.com

Narcissus is surrounded by emptiness, his own reflection in the water is no longer visible, his face is transformed into a head without eyes, although he is still able to call everything without having any idea of what he’s doing. I’ve chosen this drawing of mine in which the confrontation with the mirroring image/reflection is central.

In this work I refer to Narcissus by Caravaggio (1598/1599). Narcissus, in the stories of Ovidius, falls in love with his own reflection. He tries to embrace his mirror image, but every time it disappears in ripples of water. This makes him languish into a daffodil. I compare this with today's society where everyone strives to be seen as an individual, making us more identical and actually languishing us as well. I made this work during my Artist in Residency at DRAWInternational. While working on it, a mirror fell and broke. I saw this as a predestined occurrence. The superstition of a broken mirror comes from the time of the Roman Empire and says that a broken mirror affects the soul.

In my drawings I make contradictions between figurative and abstract geometric style elements and want to make the audience look at familiar images in a different way.

Marthe Zink, 2015