Review:Tom Mooney
It is a significant coup for the Presentation Centre in Enniscorthy to acquire an exhibition by an artist of the calibre of Marja van Kampen, who moved to the county from Galway late last year.
The Pig Yard Gallery earlier this month gave us a foretaste of what could be expected from Van Kampen, but the Presentation Centre is a major show, curated with an understanding of the space which best serves the colours of this Dutch artist.
It has been said that her work is inspired by several visits to India, yet the prism has a distinctly European aperture, almost reminiscent of the mature dalliance with light and colour by an older Matisse in Nice.
There is too the ethereal playfulness of Chagall, particularly in the Madonna-like visages, and that Eastern European juxtaposition of motifs and myths, with cats, angels and the moon having walk-on roles, often with the aesthetic of a Gauguin, or a Rousseau.
Van Kampen has conceded that she works best with acrylic on canvas to free her from the restriction of the commonplace, but an addendum to this approach is the epic scale in the smaller works, which imbue the ecumenical ambience of the venue.
Depending on your point of view, the paintings might be described as surreal, or magic-realism, but nothing should distract from the technical virtuosity: Van Dampen, like the aforementioned Rousseau, can achieve the poetic, given wings by Pegasus, through a curious solidity in how she paints.
In Music in the Park, Van Kampen demonstrates the unforced discipline of the artist, the voyeur in India and Connemara, but what is her signature, clearly visible also in Angel Dreamer and The Love of Music, is how unfettered the colour is. It is illusory and yet accessible. Gaugin in his later years, when hounded by the shadow of death, became increasingly obsessed with the trajectory of life.
Van Kampen addresses – not the end of life – but its relationship with art, almost contemplatively, with a sinuous line, which anchors the work, and a luxuriant use of colour, which etherealises it, and the poetic aura of growth – moving on -is symbolised by the flora and its mythical counterpart, fauna.
Occasionally, Van Kampen’s faces (Music in the Park) and still life (The Love of Music) are rooted in the infant steps of cubism: the face in the first is sculptured and the instrument in the second is two dimensional flat, but Van Kampen plays her own chords by ignoring cubism’s monochromatic scale.
Angel Dreamer points the viewer in another direction: Van Kampen as an artist of reverie – a la Chagall – but with this important proviso: there is no indication of Chagall’s arbitrariness, Van Kampen is more romantic than vaudeville, and though there is the temptation to view some paintings as surreal, Van Kampen’s work is devoid of montage. Everything has its place, and the narrative has its logic, which is why the work is essentially literal, waiting to be read. ([email protected])
