Studium Generale: 'Sacred Spit'
Lecture by Helen Verhoeven
In my lecture Sacred Spit I will discuss my installation Church I, paintings from my 2018 exhibition Oh God and some of my earlier work that deals with Christian art in particular and the religious feeling in general. Through this I hope to explore the societal and psychological underpinnings that have driven both religion and art.
Though unreligious myself, I am spellbound by the spaces and paraphernalia that induce religious feelings. I covet the light, the air and objects that demand a meditation on horror and beauty, on human love, cosmic loneliness, and other existential problems. A few years ago, I decided to build myself a church because I longed for a space that would woo and overwhelm, would induce rapture, but that would be humanist and secular.
Was it possible to create a space that would house images and objects about mankind and the natural world without the pitfalls of the archive, the mausoleum, the church or museum? Could a churchish space be free of religion, be simultaneously private and public, deeply personal and universal? Could it be at all?
Helen Verhoeven (Leiden, 1974) is a Dutch/American painter and sculptor based in Berlin. Verhoeven grew up in the Netherlands and moved to the US in 1986. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1995) and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art (2001). In 2005-2006 she attended the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and since 2009 she has lived and worked in Berlin. She received the Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2008, the Wolvecampprijs in 2010 and in 2018 the ABN-AMRO Art Prize for which she will make an exhibition at the Amsterdam Hermitage in March of 2019. Her work has been exhibited internationally in institutions such as Saatchi Gallery, Kestnergesellschaft, the Bonnefantenmuseum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Gemeentemuseum, the Essl Museum, Dordrecht Museum, Centraal Utrecht Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art – North Miami and the FLAG Art Foundation in New York.
