The body embedded, silicate paint, sand and glue on wood, installation during Rijksakademie OPEN 2016, 2016

Daily performance on november 24,25 and 26 2016 by Lynn Meijer and Jamie de Groot

Special thanks to: Camiel Karsten

How does one experience space? Marije Gertenbach addresses this question in her work. She is interested in the boundaries, history and characteristics of that space. They dictate the way a viewer’s physicality relates to it. Gertenbach considers spaces as bodies of a society, in various forms. The temporality and changes of space equal ours. They remind us of life’s singularity, of our mortality.

Gertenbach is inspired by spaces showing traces of time, layer upon layer. The space that no longer exists also relates to what’s still here.

For RijksakademieOPEN 2015 Gertenbach created a contemporary equivalent of the world’s first bathroom. She now presents the concrete floor from that installation as fragments – an echo of frescoes that are cut from walls for restauration purposes. The paintings break free from their context and thus beget an alternative meaning. They not only contain the space, they become the space itself. And by doing so also change the edge of space.

-Edo Dijksterhuis

In addition to the work the publication The body embedded (500 editions) is available.
Text: Hidde van Greuningen
Photography: Sanna Gertenbach
Design: Benjamin Earl
Printed at Charles Nypels Lab, Jan van Eyck, Maastricht