Sunday 23 May 2010

Miss Van "Lovestain"











I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity of helping Miss Van hang her work in the space in preparation for her Solo show at the StolenSpace gallery in brick lane. It was a very last minute thing but opportunities like that are not to be missed. For those not aware of her work Miss Van from Paris is one of the leading international female street artists reaching global fame with her signature female characters or 'poupes' as she calls them. Miss Van was a larger than life character herself, quite a dominating and powerful figure, but still very kind and feminine she was a very interesting personality. This show was a retrospective of her work spanning around 15 years if i remember correctly so there was a great deal of pieces, mostly paintings, which actually filled both the large and smaller rooms that the gallery has - an impressive body by anyone's standard. The pieces were arranged into a chronological order, after which it was really interesting to see how different phases of her practice had produced some very different feels and moods whilst keeping the same centrally themed characters throughout. The work could be highly sexual or enticing, dark and primal at times. Some was very refined and delicate, more traditionally feminine. But in any state the work was undeniably beautiful. Perhaps some of my favourite works were painted directly onto animal hides as she experimented with the feral aesthetic.


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