Natascha van den Boom

'In Natascha van den Boom’s work a repetitive gesture is stretched over time. Imagine this as the etching of a surface, like a knife that keeps peeling layers away, adding depth to the surface but only removing and unveiling this time. Something is marked by its increasing absence. Imagine the direction of gazes bouncing off from stranger to stranger, quickly moving away when making eye-contact. In an all-pervasive atmosphere, the gaze’s direction can be observed from the outside from time to time. A fleeting meeting, then the void of space. Anne Carson describes the act of translation as a cutting through surfaces to a place that has no business being underneath. I see Natascha’s fascination for the uncanny in everyday situations as translations of it. Cutting through. The different materials and gestures in the space illuminate conflicting feelings, the warmth and alienation belonging to the same event underneath the surface, and the important awareness that we’re stuck in a place in-between. We can go underneath. Entering such space there emerges a beautiful ambiguity: are the objects peelings or the original fruits getting undressed?

 

Text by Giulia Damiani