Marc Bijl

Marc Bijl (born Leerdam, 1973) is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Berlin. His works are based upon social issues and their use of symbols and rules. This can result in interventions in the public space, sculptures or installations that undermine or underline this perception of the world.

Biography

From 1992 until 1997 Marc Bijl studied at the Royal Academy of Art & Design in 's-Hertogenbosch. In 1996 he studied for a year at Glasgow School of Art^[1]. In his early work Marc Bijl reacted to global themes and to popular fascination with symbols of political power, globalization of the economy, religion and nationalism. Bijl switches in his work between political activity and street culture as he does between the media of image, text and music. He exposes the superficialities, icons and myths of popular culture in his work to stimulate the spectator to contemplate about moral and ethical issues. Bijl employs visual elements borrowed from punk and gothic subcultures. And from anarchism. His early works are representational, cartoon-like and often textual. His recent work is more abstract and minimalistic. They have made clear references to modernist art-historical icons such as Mark Rothko, Mondriaan, De Stijl (Rietveld chair) and more subtle references to Jannis Kounellis and Joseph Beuys. Bijl adapts these classical works to his own corporate style. He seeks a more abstsract formal language that is in many respects more ambigious than his earlier vocabulary. Bijl undermines systems but at the same time he is depended on these systems. Bijl's work is often rebellious and tends to the illegality. His work is clearly rooted in streetculture and possesses elements of graffiti, performance an installation art^[2].

Works

Solo-exhibition Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany 2009

The work La revoluzione siamo noi (2002) shows Bijls fascination with popular culture. The work is a life-size sculpture of the famous game icon Lara Croft. She is covered in tar, holding two pistols and smoking a sigaret. On the wall behind her is sprayed La revoluzione siamo noi (We are the revolution), the famous slogan which Joseph Beuys often used in his artworks. Bijl's textual installations take an important place in his oeuvre. In these installations he sprays with graffiti short messages on places in the public space. In 2002 he sprayed RESIST on the entrance to the exhibition space Portikus in Frankfurt am Main. In September 2002 het sprayed te words TERROR on the entrance to the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel. In January 2009 he sprayed the words MODERN CRISIS on the same entrance to the Fridericianum. Also Bijl posted his name on the hoardings of prominant building sites, mimicking the corporate identity of the hoardings of concerned, he was following the strategy of the corporate players who appropriate the realm. He surfed on their strategies and demanded his place wihtin the economic and urban-planning establishment ^[3]. In 2002 Bijl made a fake edition of the art magazine Flash Art. With this he reacted on to the art system using that systems own rules. In bookshops his artist’s book was hardly distinguisable from an actual edition of Flash Art. In recent works Bijl refers to the concept of Rietveld's famous zigzag chair, but unlike Rietveld's coloured chair Bijl makes the chair unattractive, covering it with a thick layer of tar.

Literature

• Paco Barragàn, Marc Bijl. In case you didn’t feel like showing up, 2009 NAi Publishers, Rotterdam.

External Links

• Upstream Gallery representing Marc Bijl
• Galeries.nl

References

1. ^ http://artnews.org/marcbijl/?s=4
2. ^ Paco Barragàn, Marc Bijl. In case you didn’t feel like showing up, 2009 NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, blurb
3. ^ Paco Barragàn, Marc Bijl. In case you didn’t feel like showing up, 2009 NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 6-7