Mihai Nicodim Gallery
Marc Bijl, Iris van Dongen and Martin Skauen
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 12, 6 - 9 PM
Exhibition Dates: February 12 – March 26, 2011
Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles is pleased to announce a group exhibition with
artists Marc Bijl, Iris van Dongen and Martin Skauen.
Iris Van Dongen was born in 1975 in the Netherlands. Lives and works in Berlin.
The artist is known for her large pastel drawings of pretty and mysterious women in dark
and romantic fashion shoot settings. Drawing inspiration from art history and as well as
from contemporary sensitivity and her inner portraits, Iris found a way to provoke
emotions by flirting with cliches and aesthetics. Here and there you find elements of
death metal and tattoo art mixed with those from 19th century Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
In her seductive pastels that look almost photographic, the main focus is, surprisingly,
not the subject portrayed in the drawing or its expression, but the dialogue between
subject and his or her surroundings.
Marc Bijl was born in 1970 in the Netherlands. Lives and works in Berlin.
His work - sculptures, installations and interventions - is an intelligent and provocative
approach on social and political issues and their symbolic occurrence. His artistic tools
are also his targets - the symbol, the logo and the label. He attacks their superficial
image or myth – always aiming at a critical analysis of the social conditions of the
society. Politics, religion, globalization, or recent art history icons, he places them at
the center of his art, denouncing the insecurity which threatens our daily lives behind the
smoke screen of the media world. Employing a “Sex Pistols-style” his imagery is
involved with the illegal practices of social activism and with the strategies of urban
guerrillas. It results in interventions in the public space, sculptures or installations that
undermine this perception of the world. “Cockrock minimalism” admits Bijl’s debt to ‘70s
counterculture and the mucho attitude that seems to go with it. Lately, Marc got so
irritated by so much new formalistic art around him, that he needed to address it in an
ironic self-distructive way.
Martin Skauen was born in 1975 in Norway. The artist confronts the viewers of his
drawings and animated films with some truly apocalyptic scenarios. In formats that are
sometimes quite huge, he evokes dismal places that may be the scenes of murder, war
or cruel rituals. Skauen’s pictorial language owes much to the nightmarish visions of
Hieronymus Bosch, for example, or to Greek mythology or contemporary sadomasochist
comics. He creates these disturbing motifs with sarcasm or very black humor, and the
erotic is couple with violence or its latent presence. In these images one sees the figures
of martyrs, torturers, perverts and hermaphrodites interacting in a multitude of ways,
whereby the narrative ‘scene’ always remains mysterious, admitting several
interpretations. Whether static or moving, Martin Skauen’s pictures radiate a strange,
melancholy fascination, which utterly enthralls the viewer. Skauen’s contribution to this
show is a new series of 10 drawings, fictional „Times“ magazine covers.
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