Elly Strik (1961)
Fragile pastel colours on paper of tremendous stature. Elly Strik typically paints works of two by three metres, and this reveals where the artist's fascination lies: the twilight realm between the desire to depict reality, and the desire to escape from reality. Transparency and fixation is also reflected in her choice of materials: the artist works only in charcoal or pencil with enamel paint.
Strik lives and works in Brussels, the home of Belgian surrealism, and her work follows the oeuvres of predecessors like René Magritte (1898-1967) and Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921). In her psychological portraits, Strik is fascinated by role patterns.* In one series, she painted a series of portraits of elegantly dressed ladies, all wearing gorilla masks, a reference to the Guerilla Girls, a movement of anonymous female artists based in New York who have been taking on gender inequality in the art world since 1985 (with perhaps just a hint of an allusion to the 1933 film King Kong). Both the masked aspect and the reliance on pale tints are reminiscent of the work of earlier Belgian surrealists such as James Ensor (1860-1949) and Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946). Strik follows these contrasts and relationships to their conclusion; her works are not only about art history, but her own personal history.
* www.depont.nl, 27.11.2008
