trompe l'oeil painters palette
2022
paint (precious) stones, silver
An unspoken popular consensus forces us to think that certain objects have intrinsic value, apart from our appreciation of them.
Gems, precious stones and precious metals are generally deemed valuable, a splash of paint and wood are seen as virtually worthless.
Looks can deceive, are we looking at a precious rock or at a dried-up lump of paint and does this difference matter?
With these works the artist duo questions this assumption and tries to encourage a reversal of judgement in the viewer’s appreciation.
The subjective aura of the painter’s tools and materials is objectified by adding layers of precious materials, turning them into fetishistic objects that resist reductive strategies.
available — enquire
diamond mud
2022
diamonds, leather
A pair of shoes stands serenely in a shimmering puddle, creating an image that instantly captivates. Like a scene cut from a magical tale that continues uninterrupted; the puddle a body of sparkling particles, of separate fragments that each reflect the light individually yet generously. Such that you muse about freshly fallen snow, how the early winter sun highlights the crystals, about how it crunches under your soles and tenderly covers your toes with every step. Although you have learned that in this case it is shreds, a brilliant residue that remains when a diamond is faceted.
At which point the title also recurs to you, 'diamond mud', and the entrancement gradually subsides: the reference to ooze too besmirched and too concrete for what happens here so delicately. It makes you understand that something falters, that the splendour might blind you for a reality hidden behind the charm. It is, indeed, what diamonds are capable of, their aura of luxury a disguise for the ills that accompany their mining and sinister trading. A pretence that suddenly makes the scene shine less straightforwardly and deliberately lends it an unsettling ambiguity.
available — enquire
