This is an article from the Metropolis M archives
Published on 17 March, 2014
Schiedam
Municipal Museum Schiedam
27/04/2013 to 01/09/2013
The large canvases by Evi Vingerling (Gouda, 1979) at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam initially depict abstracted forms against a monochrome background. The shapes against the bright color planes turn out to be based on everyday objects and scenes the artist encountered in real life.
The solo exhibition at the Schiedam museum features only works titled ” Untitled .” They were all created within the past year, some even specifically for Unisono 26. This creates a unified overview of Vingerling’s most recent work, but it is also somewhat one-sided.
Vingerling isolates seemingly insignificant details from a daily stream of visual input. She removes these from their original context and freezes of the canvas, leading one to place Vingerling’s work in the modernist tradition of Greenberg. However, she doesn’t show the canvas as an object, but rather a representation of an object on the canvas. She depicts trivialities without attempting to ascribe them monumental status. This makes her work surprisingly mundane; the paintings, as it were, transport you into your own life, or rather, into the life of Evi Vingerling.
The works are based on photographs taken by the artist. For example, the black canvas with a pattern of white dots depicts the bursting of fireworks; the soft blue lines on a white background represent the glitter of light on the sea. “It’s not a translation,” Vingerling says in a video shown in the exhibition space, “it’s simply what I saw.”
That photography forms the basis of Vingerling’s work is clearly evident in the canvas, which features a pink silhouette against a deep purple background. The image is explosive: clean lines contrast with the monochrome background. Or rather, the purple plane provides a powerful recess of the pink ground. Vingerling first painted a layer of pink gouache and then reduced it with purple acrylic paint to create the shape of a group of palm trees or plants. It appears to have been formed sculpturally.
The use of gouache is characteristic of Vingerling’s work, creating a soft, matte appearance. This is evident in the red on the red canvas. The deep colors seem to want to transport you for a moment, but from a distance, the image—in this case, a plant—reveals itself. Although the works sometimes seem pretentious, they are ultimately nothing more than a glimpse of reality reduced to a single color. The sea, nature, fireworks; Vingerling shows us that everything is ultimately nothing more than a collection of planes and lines.
The painterly directness of her approach is beautiful. It showcases Vingerling’s stylized and attentive view of the world. But the infinite possibilities this entails are somewhat paralyzing. At worst, it even fosters indifference. Although the constant representation of the everyday avoids a purely formalistic approach, Vingerling’s world, reduced to planes and lines, fails to captivate me permanently.
Sanneke Huisman