Isolde Venrooy – following her line
When thinking about the original principle of life, you think about the journey from beginning to the end, when thinking about the original principle of art, you cannot miss that exact line. Isolde Venrooy follows its different manifestations in her artworks that explore unexpectedness coming out of normality, surprises hidden in habits of perceiving.
I. Venrooy, ‘The Property of Taking up Space’, detail (c)
What first grabs your attention is the beauty of her artistic construction – the perfection of every detail, minute rendering, the intelligent occupation of space. But then you immerse yourself in the composition that triggers a whole specter of metaphors, fantasies and emotions. ‘The Property of Taking up Space’ is not only an exploration of technical possibilities of art construction made of rubber and the attractive play of voids and lines, but a creative net, a trap, or secure bag whose lattice gives you so many windows for outside world.
I. Venrooy, ‘The Property of Taking up Space’ (c)
‘Lifted or the story is in the soil’ has a similar effect. The dynamic balance between up and down, soil and heaven pushes you to look further and those felt lines take you up to the complex worlds of metaphors about life, continuity, direction…
I. Venrooy, ‘Lifted or the story is in the soil’ (c)
Isolde Venrooy is a visual artist and a graphic designer whose educational background (Academie voor Beeldende Vorming te Tilburg, two-dimensional autonomous, Masters of European Arts and Cultures, Tilburg, Leicester, Granada, Design Academy Eindhoven, man and communication) offers her a variety of aesthetic, artistic and operating insights. She’s active in many fields – as a graphic designer Isolde worked for cultural commissioners including Netherlands Architecture Institute, Onomatopee and Atelier Zuidvleugel; as a visual artist she participated, among others, in Northern Fibre 6, Tables and Borders, Balkan Fiber Art and many international and national exhibitions.
I. Venrooy, ‘Grass Will Grow Over Your Cities’ (c)
This specific approach that combines graphic clarity and artistic vision in the communication between man and nature, individual and global could be seen in the work ‘Back to Basics’. Growth rings made of cardboard are compressed inside a small box whose horror vacui principle holds the very essence of nature – organic material that perpetuates itself not only in the continuous line, but also in its recycled ingredients.
I. Venrooy, ‘Back to Basics’ (c)
‘White storage’ communicates within the same discourse. Rows of white ceramic teeth in a cardboard box also touch something primordial, like recovering the core of human identity (recognition of identity by teeth marks), but simultaneously reducing individuality by placing them side by side like a small army. Teeth are also indicators of how one lived his/her life – what one ate, where he/she lived, was it a nervous or relaxed person… So what seems to be a simple relic, a plastic object, could be the zip file of an individual universe.
I. Venrooy, ‘White storage’ (c)
Isolde Venrooy also has a specific way of using graphic directness and purity to concisely express some biological, physical facts. On the same imaginative level like visualizations of spiritual human moments, those works have the effect of picturesque proverbs. ‘Muscle Memory’, a drawing made of elastic cord, in joints and straight lines, presents the strains one has experienced through his/her existence – those bars are maps of specific journey.
I. Venrooy, ‘Muscle Memory’, (c)
‘Black arrangement’, constituted of felt medals, resembles a group of many private triumphal moments where one act meant a lot for many. In recent national histories medals stood for a variety of deeds, sometimes of contradictory meanings depending who is watching. Black, the no color where all the colors disappear, could have this negative sign, but it could also be a sign of universality where color doesn’t matter.
I. Venrooy, ‘Black arrangement’, detail (c)
In Isolde’s art one can take many directions in finding the sense. Her partially abstract compositions with distinctive titles navigate us to some extent, but allow us to rely on our own experience. She leaves just enough space for personal stories triggered by intelligent and creative artistic handwriting.
I. Venrooy, ‘Portrait of a Family’ (c)
Always ecologically responsible, with great thoughts for a private and public being Isolde Venrooy uses a range of media, from sculpture, drawings, textile and paper art, to convey very persuasive personal language that makes one laugh, think and feel about the world that surrounds him/her.
(Ivana Podnar is guest blogger on Personal Cyber Botanica)