Marc Bijl (1970)
Marc Bijl calls himself an art activist. His video installations, sculptures and graffiti are based on subjects such as mass culture, religion, globalisation/anti-globalisation and politics. Bijl divides his time between New York and Rotterdam. His works always tell a straight story, frequently drawing on sub-cultures such as 'punk' and 'gothic' and questioning what commitments and codes these sub-cultures come with. He then turns these questions on current events and the art world, exposing myth-making or the biased nature of cultures or national consequence in interventions. For example, he 'crashed' the Documenta in Kassel in 2002, spray-painting one letter of the word 'TERROR' on each of the six columns of the main exhibition hall. 'It was just about one year after September 11th,' says Bijl. 'The world was in the grip of terrorism, but I saw very little of that reflected in what was going on at the Documenta.'
Not one to beat about the bush, Bijl shows what drives him in no uncertain terms: an American flag drenched with black crude oil, or the Gerrit Rietveld 'Berlin' chair presented as a battered war relic. Bijl loves to reverse roles, as we see for example in his portraits of influential thinkers such as Multatuli, Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Queen Beatrix in template style, a technique we more readily associate with revolutionaries and activists. Marc Bijl was awarded the Wolvecampprijs 2008.**
* www.sudsandsoda.nl, 03.12.2008
** The Wolvecampprijs is a Dutch biennial prize awarded to painters, consisting of a sum of € 18.500 plus € 10.000 in exhibition funding.
