EN
Opening speech Übergangsweise IX Goethe Institut 7 June 2019
Anuli Croon: 'No man is an island'
AppendiX Grafiek, a group of cooperating artists united in a foundation, has this time invited Anuli Croon as a contributor in the series Übergangsweise.
Welcome, Anuli, welcome, dear people, to the Goethe Institut!
Some 18 months ago, in a Scottish island; we're walking to the next village with a B&B. It's going to be a long walk, at least 28 kilometres – 'strenuous' is the word in the map. We find ourselves in a vast landscape; the sea to the west, the mainland to the east; a cloudy puff in the sky. Vistas. Gazing into the distance I call the map back to mind so as to place my movements on the edge of this country. When you look straight ahead you see anthracite, in all kinds of variations, small differences in height, darkness, reflections and abrupt interruptions. It looks as if the path stops right there, in the distance. The water among the cliffs is 'blak' – yes, 'blak'. I know that word thanks to Anuli. Stagnant water, unruffled, calm and smooth, you can call 'blak'.
I could liken the ordnance survey maps to AC's landscapes – her paintings, drawings and murals. The map that helps us roam the island is a stylization of signs, colours and patterns – just like a work by AC? No, the map has a legend, a key to the symbols. And a map, obviously, has no cut-offs and compositions. The map follows the world. Unlike AC's maps, because her landscapes follow her spiritual hike-cum-search, with staggered perspectives, from inside to outside and from horizon to reflection, even the other way around.
You can whizz along her work with your eyes, you can explore it at your leisure, you can map out a route as if it were a topographical quilt.
AC paints, stipples, masks, draws lines, applies rhythms, colours and patterns with rollers and brushes, contrasting, now summarily and then fully. Patterns are growing, patterns of life, landscapes and human figures. She wants to keep the movement under control, but at the same time allow scope to anything. That's why she masks and tapes up, showing the detail of the roller for a lively surface. Her work is moving on the inside of the skull, fluttering outside, to & fro. Don't flutter too fast, because the image changes before you know it.
Stylization, shifts and colour transitions cause a certain nimbleness that reminds you of looking through your lashes. What I see looks mysterious and dangerous ... or charming after all? Everything's moving, whether you look carefully or casually, calling to mind a movie from the twenties, jerky, tongue-in-cheek. Is this what AC aims for: call forth associations, surprise the viewer, elicit stories? The painter may be in full command of the image, but does that include her own? You paint what you can, after all, not what you can't – or don't know.
In her studio she tells me: the painting = research, pattern on the natural black field; this is where I can improvise while painting. Work on paper, on the other hand, is cautious, sophisticated, prepared, means searching for remaining space and the dividing lines between colours on a natural white field.
Like a story board for the canvases, I ask? Like a prelude to the murals? The conversation flags for a moment.
AC covers the traditional repertory of painting in an individual illusory style, unreal, fictitious, alive to hilarious inconsistencies. In this exhibition you'll find a small selection:
*Landscapes on canvas – timeless and stilled; inviting as well as dark.
*Still lifes on paper – pot, plant, leaf, with the self-imposed strict limitations, like using three items in three colours, balancing between remaining space and form.
*Official portraits on canvas and in murals; sturdy human figures, close together, often two of them in droll positions with funny, resigned features, in architectural spaces with many staggered patterns. Love? Power, in city life?
*Portraits called 'tronies' (mugs'), with a large head of hair, nose and eyes, which look at you with a penetrating gaze, at the same time evading your glance. Crazy, at times.
Time and again I'm being harassed, attracted, thrown back, seduced, repelled. What is going on here? The question bounces back via the canvas. Atmosphere becomes form, form becomes atmosphere.
For a short time now – thanks to a documentary about the planet earth in the universe – I've been aware that everything and everyone, the tree, the pot, man, has originated from stardust and will one day turn to stardust again. AC manages to evoke that sense of 'between times' – time is a broad notion. She paints it on canvas. The legend on the painting, that's us.
© Landa van Vliet
May/June 2019
Translation NL > EN by Gerard van den Hooff
