Dejacopis @ TheC_Amsterdam


Intimacy.
You cannot truly describe it.
It just happens and you can sense it. Feel its warmth.
You can picture it though, represent it, show it.
Nadine Reef knows how to portray intimacy to its most poetical height.
Take ‘Kissing Darkness’, 2010: it’s the exact moment when lips get closer but are still apart.
The time when the eyes are starting to close and the hands drop to avoid distancing the other.
Shot in a light black and white, this picture could be the manifesto for the ArtPride exhibition at the Go Gallery.
You could say this show is blunt, direct, provocative, but at its core, isn’t intimacy blunt? isn’t it the most open time ever shared with someone else?

M-a-k takes the private and turns it open for everyone to see. Each of her portraits focuses on bare open legs juxtaposed with the most various objects and backgrounds. The appeal is glamorous, like a fashion spread but the quality is raw, stripped of the artificial.
Delayla 1 and the photo ‘Thermos’, 2010 have a slightly different appeal; Skin is showing, the man at the center calls for action, his cigarette is not yet lid, but even in such setting and even if naked, he flashes a humorous side due to a plastic nose that could be a sexual fetish, still able to crack you a smile. So do the ceramic condoms perfectly glazed by Levan & Ekka. Using the Delft style, each piece truly resembles the feeling of plastic and rubber all the while getting rid of the associated idea of rational and safe.

All around Go Gallery you will also find other ceramic pieces, this time in the shape of white underwear sporting a blue rim on the top. The duo named Nilsson van der Horst created a mohair version as well of Adidas briefs objectifying the desire, the very totem of all the men you can have or fantasize about.

Sex and laughter, what can be more human? What can be more intimate than that?
Maybe, a confession. Lisette de Zoete and her ‘My Goodbye’ is a confession. The most striking and emotional. This tiny little painting, comprised of a poem, a picture and a key carries her whole palette of feelings, from the bravest to the frailest. You have to relate, you have been there, whether accepting your nature or embracing the power of your weaknesses.

Bas Meerman’s drawings and watercolors can be aligned in this same sphere; at times delicate and fragile and then wild and bold, these early artworks represent all the first yearnings experienced by this critically acclaimed artist. Be it a gentle face with a baseball hat or the touch of two hips that want to be even closer to each other and to you.

Finally take these two pictures: Jan van Breda’s ‘Lad’, 2011 and Jasper Groen’s ‘Gabriel’.
You could say that both are just jocks, two hunky boys that are nothing more than muscles and a pretty face. Get closer, look at the differences and the contradictions. Sporting an erection with the lights dimmed and a timid gaze, the ‘lad’ here seems too much aware of the photographer, yet it’s for this reason that the portrait depicts the essence of intimacy. It’s like he’s presenting his body for you only, just like a lover before you get to love him.

So does ‘Gabriel’. A trick right before you possess him. No trace of shyness though, no hesitation. You can only get there after all the insecurities have been shed away, spoken of, displayed to be destroyed.
ArtPride at Go Gallery will be closing tomorrow, the 21st of August.

http://gogallery.nl/ 
http://www.reeffotografie.nl/ 
http://lisettedezoete.nl/ 
http://twitter.com/#!/LisettedeZoete 
http://www.basmeerman.com/Home.html 
http://www.janvanbreda.com/ 
http://twitter.com/#!/janvanbreda
http://www.jaspergroen.nl/
https://twitter.com/#!/ap4b