Page 125 - The 70s - ABC of the material

For some time now Maria van Elk, who was well remained uncoloured, which shows now as
known for her textile works, explores the risky,
blurred area between paintings and object art,
which has developed from “soft sculpture” and
“Arte Povera”.
Antje von Graevenitz
Vrij Nederland, volume 38, June 4th, 1977
page 50
Art in the Corridor
In the “Paddepoel” you follow the Zernikelaan.
That comes to an end on a crossroad, the
“Grazen”. On this crossroad, right against the
small dike along the “Starkenborgh” canal,
stands the Nuclear Physics Accelerator Institute
(KVI). The front building looks better than the
average university laboratory. When you enter
and walk straight up the the stairs, the interior
gets more business like the closer you get to
the accelerator. A long cross corridor separates
management and education from equipment.
This corridor was decorated previously with
photographs of the production of radioactive
isotopes. With the passing of the years these
photographs did neither improve nor become
more interesting. Now some of them had to
make room for an extraordinary work of art,
made by Ria van Elk. It hangs on a long grey
wall, immediately before the cyclotron. The work
consists of a series of five square canvases,
across which a diagonal seems to run. Black are
the canvases, because perpendicular lines were
drawn by hand with black oil pastel. Because of
this procedure a “corduroy” dark wall appeared,
vertically structured.
Ria van Elk started this work with one 7 meter
long canvas. This was folded exactly along
the diagonal and then taken in. Bottom right
the thus created hem was 4 cm wide, to the
left upper corner the hem tapered off, so that
on that corner even nothing was taken in.
At the blackening with oil pastel the folded strip
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whitish. Because of the asymmetry of the hem
the white chink does not follow the diagonal
exactly anymore.
The thus prepared canvas was cut in five
approximately equal pieces. Then, each piece
was trimmed to a square. Since the folding
to the right was the biggest, the rightmost
quadrant was the smallest.
The total is so large that it could not be hanged
at the owner, the physicist dr. Martien de Voigt
(who bought it in gallery Albert Waalkens in
Fisnterwolde). After consultation it is put on the
wall in the corridor of the KVI, and there it hangs
very well.
The almost diagonal line, the in size increasing
quadrants give a curious perspective sensation.
The geometrical idea of the whole could have
been shown “clean” in enamel or with acrylic
paint. The cumbersome process of Ria van Elk
takes away the too obvious of its idea.
A corridor which is worth while.
Bert Boekschoten, U.K. Cultuur, October 5th, 1978
page 63
Maria van Elk
Topological Symmetry is called the work that
Maria van Elk (1943) shows at the moment at
gallery Swart (Van Breestraat 23) in Amsterdam.
It looks more complicated than it is in reality.
The term hails from mathematics and was
declared completely relevant to the work
of Maria van Elk by an expert. Trained at
the department of painting of the Academy
Minerva in Groningen, she worked for a time as
autodidact with textile and developed herself
with this in the Constructivistic direction. Since
a number of years she focusses completely on
her drawings. In this she can realise ideas that
she can not elaborate in another way.
Last year she showed Five Minutes Drawings at
Swart in which time played a role in the visual