Ghosts, Brides & other Companions
Strik’s book is a fluent stream of images and words in a strong connection to each other where the look inside and the outside happens simultaneously. The images continue within a long historic artistic line of visionary artists who probe the thresholds of human essence. Strik’s intense, poetic practice explores the possibilities of metamorphosis and the process of (artistic) creation. In conversation with aspects from El Greco, Goya, Darwin, Freud, Munch, Ensor or Duchamp her approach is archaic in a highly alert way. The viewer will be confronted with energetically-charged apparitions transmuted into shapes, portraits and figures on paper, now fixed as definitive states of being. Constantly shifting between monumentality and intimacy, her figures are a visual stimulation that prompt the viewer to rethink the human condition today. The book ties in the exhibition by Elly Strik in Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid.
