Ger van Elk (1941)
Ger van Elk examines the codes and conventions behind the visual arts and their history. Since studying both art (at the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheid, now the Rietveldacademie) and art history, he has always drawn connections between creating art and reflecting on it. Van Elk has an appreciation for the art and artists that have come before him and the way in which their works are subsequently interpreted by others. Classic genres such as the landscape, the still life and the portrait, as well as historic figures, are the sources of his inspiration. Collages, staged scenes and paint-on-photograph are among his favoured means of expression.
Van Elk has an eye to the photographic illusion and the artistic abstraction that can bestow so many different meanings on a presentation or image. Even in the early nineteen seventies, Van Elk was well aware of the mutability of photograph. Van Elk reverses the standard notion of photography; for him, a photo is not a record of reality, but instead creates an illusion. As we now know, this is a theme with a vast horizon: today, in the internet age, we can see examples of this reversal all around us.
