Marije Gertenbach. The snake games

About

How does one experience space? This question Marije Gertenbach addresses in her work. She’s interested in the boundaries, history and characteristics of a 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 the work The sum of the body, 2015 Gertenbach created a contemporary equivalent of the world’s first bathroom. The concrete floor from that installation she now presents 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