The General World Magazine for Quackery, Fraud, Arts and Sciences (T.G.W.M.Q.F.A.S)

The focus in Eikelboom’s practice is often characterised by the striking imagery but it’s primarily about the interspace; an interlude in where meaning is given to a range of possibilities and combinations, the point that is susceptible to multiple interpretations. This language speaks of the gap between culture and its codes, from high to low. Through the imagery and the use of specific materials Eikelboom creates a tendency between derogation techniques and honesty. There is always something behind the work that is not revealed on the surface. We are never sure if the image gives us satisfaction or makes us critical. And in the same two-way way, Eikelboom undermines the artistry. Here in the project T.G.W.M.Q.F.A.S the metaphor of the quack (a fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill) runs subject. Comparing artistry to quackery seems like stepping on to thin ice, and that is what Eikelboom wants. Since art is the place to stimulate different ways of looking and applaud ambivalent opinions it is matter to shape internal polarities and to conquer conventions within the world. Quacks were known for shouting in a loud voice to sell their wares at the market, this is comparable to that what Eikelboom conceders to be crucial for a healthy art practise. ‘Art doesn’t need to be responsible, that is not its job.’

Eikelboom is showing a series of paintings/collages that are made with magnets; the magnets are here to confront the spectator (here too the appurtenant) to fill the artist shoes by allowing them to intervene in the composition. A similar approach is used in the Liberal Picture Service XS (LPS) where observing and listening place you in the role of the picture maker. The LPS Eikelboom self-described as a ‘pseudoscientific, conceptual, free association machine’ inspired by the ever-increasing amount of images we deal with daily.

All this is a gateway that provides a wave of meaning that can only be given form to through the consciousness of the spectator. And that raises questions, is Eikelboom’s shared artistic inner world a form of quackery or does the fraud take place outside of the world of his imagination.

Bob Eikelboom graduated at the Fine Arts department of the Royal Academy of Art in 2012.

Frame or be framed

‘Frame or be framed’ is a deep-rooted motif that runs through Puck Verkade’s (1987, The Netherlands) video based practice as an inquiry into the complexities of representation. How do these complexities inform gendered and racialised biases in everyday interpersonal encounters? How are they mediated and visualised in order to perpetuate social inequalities? Digging through generational layers of visual culture tropes has led Verkade to use humor and irony as an entry into the stickiness of subjectivity. A continuous feed of embodied explorations results in speculative constructions composed of re-appropriated found footage, sampled pop music, low res animations and personal recordings. Formerly predominantly screen based, Verkade’s recent body of work is unfolding into a diverse materiality of sorts and has made way for sculptural elements to support and situate her video works as part of space-intrusive installations.

Verkade’s installation ‘Breeder’, consisting of three video episodes and various privacy screen-like sculptures, speculates on how processes of reproduction become a sticky mess through lense based power structures. It explores how sexual, social and visual reproduction are entangled in a web of (mis)representation.

Puck Verkade received her BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2011 and recently completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London. Her work has been shown at various venues, such as the Gemeentemuseum in Den Haag, Showroom MAMA in Rotterdam, Gasworks in London and LOOP in Barcelona. In December 2017 she will have her first solo exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew. Puck Verkade lives and works in London.