Myrthe van der Mark

PERFORMANCE AND INSTALLATION

Girl lives in the village. Sculptress. If you must know.

The orange atmosphere experienced when entering the exhibition is the result of a distinct range of wavelengths within the visible spectrum. The name of this colour is derived from the homonymous fruit, which procures this colour from carotenes, a photosynthetic pigment that converts sunlight into chemical energy. In fact, while we call the fruit orange, it actually retains every other colour whilst rejecting the orange frequency. The colour orange is associated with fire, energy, amusement, danger, extraversion and the unconventional, as well as with taste and aroma. Next to being an important colour in Hinduism and Buddhism, it has a well established connection with the Netherlands through the House of Orange. The current chromatic circumstances are presumed to be connected to the origins of the girl in question.

While the basis of the module has been made orange, an adjacent separate space emits pure white light. Two separate growing processes integrate the pigments dissolved into the water: the creation of a crystal structure, and the absorption by the vascular system of the carnations. The organic and mineral kingdoms depicting the dance of the spheres.

Skylight domes are produced from thermoformed polycarbonate, and intended to allow natural zenith light into vast interior spaces. Optimal lighting in buildings is an essential factor for physical and mental performance. In the absence of daylight, the constellation of artificially illuminated skylights presented reveals a variety of inner worlds. Each separate sphere contains the fruits of a different participating person, the Doors of Perception copied on their own printer, each page with personal annotations. Finally the filled forms are scanned into the mother machine, back into the hive mind.

Myrthe van der Mark retraces the hidden pathways of ancient teachings in her elusive practice. Using seemingly trivial elements we encounter in daily life, she triggers presence of mind in the present moment through the evocation of distant times and places. Researching texts devised to guide us out of the psychic entanglement with the abstract concepts that slowly cemented the fortifications of our worldview into a gilded cage, an entropic network started to unfold.

Scattered around the world wide web, labyrinthine libraries and sacred spaces of social harmony, rumours of Mazdaznan leading from the Temple Association through the Brotherhood to the occult origins of Bauhaus crossed with parallel paths. Traces of Bas Jan Ader’s ultimate expedition via Ouspensky’s writings and The Fourth Way by Gurdjieff’s legacy to Theosophy, Sufism and Tantrism. Having had an Anthroposophical education incorporated into a performing arts initiation herself, the resonance of these complementary voices started synchronizing into a transcendental (celestial) choir.

Upon reading Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, we come across the first page, dedicated: ‘For M’. Myrthe accepted the Gift of several dozens of friends, relatives and different people encountered by chance along the way, who each marked their passage through the pages of this remarkable document in their own particular style, from their personal perspective, connecting the specific to the universal in their own individual form.

Excerpt of the exhibition text by Petrus Paklons

Curated by Charlotte Crevits
Presented Cc Strombeek
Strombeek