Page 15 - Enamel & More

For The choice of the Artist Maria van Elk shows a development in her work that, naturally,
is closely related to her previous work. She calls this series Crossings. She draws with oil
pastel on paper or carton intersecting lanes. There are several crossings:
a. one lane overlaps the other one;
b. the underlying lane is drawn through the parent lane causing, by means of the drawing
process, a second crossing on the intersection;
c. one colour dominates the other colour although that colour lies indeed under the other
one. this is because lighter colours easily take on parts of darker colours, while the
darker colours remain practically unaffected.

In short, splendid colour mixes arise which are much more complicated than the simple
principle would suspect.

The word ‘crossings’ arouses also other, philosophical, associations that could be
interpreted in a positive or a negative sense. For instance, the sentence that one lane
dominates another at the crossing, or that at the crossing both adopt something from one
another.
In addition, they evoke a number of meanings in the context of the general everyday speech
such as ‘cancelling a bill, to undo something while it still remains, to mark a cross when
cannot write’ and so forth.

In short, this simple condensed act turned out to involve many implications, distortions of
reality and associations. About this extremely complicated combination of the most simple,
clear decisions and acts handles this work. All this in relation to experiencing reality which is
seemingly uninteresting, trivial or extremely self-evident.
When such a reality is stripped of preconceived interpretations, biases, bragging, emotions
and mystifications the so-called banal reality turns out extremely complicated.

With this work Maria van Elk in a tradition that is rooted in the investigations of the colour
theorists such as Goethe, Leblanc, Chevreuil and Wood. In painting Seurat developed, on
the basis of these investigations. his pointillism. Also, later Delauney, Albers and Lohse often
experimented and theorized with colour. Alter the war. prior to Minimal Art. the so-called
colour field painting arose in America by, among others, Olitski, Noland and Kelly. From
these the Crossings of Maria van Elk originate and connect in a way with the wall drawings
Sol LeWitt. Be it that with Lewitt there is no real mixing of the colour, rather a mixing of
colour on the retina of the eye as with the Pointillists.

Finally, a remark of Maria van Elk that could also apply to LeWitt: ‘the work is not abstract,
but concrete. The form arises from the concept.

The concept arises from perception. The simple images are rest points to dwell upon while
everything else shifts.’

* Maria van Elk: drawing 1973 – 1980 - Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 1981.

Maria van Elk / Enno Develing
Bulletin Haags Gemeente Museum 1983

13