SEE magazine – Edmonton Arts – Art Box – Published May 14, 2009

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The Id Stays In The Picture Marcelle Hanselaar’s darkest thoughts are hanging on the walls of SNAP Gallery in Back to Basics Published May 14, 2009 by Mandy Espezel & Jill Stanton in Art Box

Spikes And Dislikes | Marcelle Hanselaar’s Back to Basics traffics in raw, intense images of sex and violence — Jael and Sisera 2, for instance.

Back to Basics Snap Gallery Thursday, April 16 - Saturday, May 30

More in: Exhibits

This week, Jill and Mandy venture to SNAP’s Main Gallery, where Marcelle Hanselaar’s intense print exhibition Back to Basics is currently alarming everyone who visits.

Jill: Marcelle Hanselaar is primarily a painter, working mainly with oils. However, she’s recently discovered the medium of copper etching and aquatint, and she’s really taken ownership of the techniques. Back to Basics is an intimate exhibition of several small etchings Hanselaar completed throughout the past few years. What were your first impressions of these works, Mandy?

Mandy: I was immediately excited by this show. I hadn’t heard a lot about it, so it was kind of a surprise to me. Hanselaar’s drawing has an incredible immediacy, a violent energy that sucks you right in. The subject matter is pretty dark, but there’s also a sense of humour in these images, and lots of seductive markmaking.

Jill: Hanselaar’s work is about women’s inner nature, and visualizing the more disturbing aspects of self that we normally keep locked up in our heads. Her drawing is reminiscent of creepy illustrations from 18th- and 19th-century fairytales; she herself has admitted to being very influenced by German expressionism and Rembrandt’s penand-ink drawings of graphic murders.

Mandy: I appreciate the direct way she describes her working process in the statement for the show. She points out the relationship between the aggressive line style and the physical effort that etching requires. That connection is so strong in the work, I’m really glad she mentioned it. Were you surprised at all at the explicitness of this show? I can’t remember a recent exhibition that felt this... honest.

Jill: Are you talking about the explicit sexual content, or just the honesty of the images?

I think it’s pretty brave to admit that the things Hanselaar is speaking about in Back to Basics are part of her consciousness. These are personal, violent, disturbing images that Hanselaar has externalized. In that way, I’d say her work is extremely explicit.

Mandy: Well, the imagery and the narrative it creates are both very raw. What I’m surprised at is that we’re seeing this show at all. I can’t think of another exhibition quite like this in Edmonton before.

Jill: Why do you think that is? Is there something about Edmonton specifically that usually shuts out this kind of work, or is your statement merely a reflection of the kind of work that’s being produced everywhere right now?

Mandy: Well, I can’t say if it’s an Edmonton-specific phenomenon or not, since I never really get out of this city. All I know is that, within a local context, this show seems very controversial. Even considering something like Attila Richard Lukacs’ Polaroids exhibition at the AGA, Back to Basics seems contemporary in a way that feels unusual to me. Perhaps its the aggressiveness Hanselaar allots her female characters?

Jill: There was another show we saw recently at SNAP’s main gallery that I feel relates to this one: Joscelyn Gardner’s Missionary Position. Both bring violent female imagery to the forefront, but where Gardner’s women were submissive, Hanselaar’s characters are aggressive and dominant. Both are dark, yet honest groups of works which not only reference historical documents, but also use those references to externalize and exorcise some fairly personal thoughts pertaining to female identity and sexuality.

Mandy: There’s definitely a thematic commonality between them, but Back to Basics stands out for me just because of its actual style and figuration. I mean, a woman hammering a mallet into a man’s eye, or copulating with various beasts... there’s really nothing subtle about that.

Jill: That’s true. But I’m not sure there was much subtlety in Gardner’s work either, and I thought she did a pretty excellent job of visualizing the submissive aspect of her characters through the way she produced the work — very painstaking, detailed, and restrained. But you’re right in saying that Hanselaar’s made some of the rawest work to grace Edmonton’s gallery scene in quite a while.

Mandy: I would say Gardner’s work was far more aesthetically subtle... and appropriately so. But yes, this is certainly an exhibition I did not expect, and am very glad to have seen.

Back to Basics is on display at SNAP Gallery (10309-97 St) until May 30.

All Content Copyright Š SEE Magazine 2009