Maurice Thomassen, Lost and Found
The paintings of Maurice Thomassen are built up of a cheerful variety of materials, such as cardboard, tape, silicone mastic, plastic, acrylic binder or textiles. Preferably not straight from the shop, clean and unused, but a bit grubby, as if they had been in his studio for a long time, waiting to be thrown away or rediscovered. However, Thomassen selects this material quite consciously according to its colour, texture, or the way it is stained or torn, matching it to the part of the painting in which it is to be incorporated.
Thomassen’s unconventional paintings always have their origin in photos from the modern (mass) media that catch the artist’s attention: I am interested in how the image has been constructed, framed or perhaps corrected by the media prior to its publication. Do these images truly, objectively, depict the event, or have they been subjectively coloured in? If that is the case, I ask myself what and whose aim or interest it served.
Since Thomassen has been living and working in New York, his interest in the opinion-forming role of the image has only increased. The critical questions thrown up by the selected photos form the basis for the content of his work, which is created in the form of thematic series. The exhibition ‘Lost and Found’ combines recent works from the series ‘Speechless’ and ‘The Man Who (Dis)Appeared’.
The series ‘Speechless’ consists of small, penetrating portraits of famous as well as unknown people. The photos that form the basis of these works were used by the media to illustrate a story. After that, the image began to lead a life of its own, leaving the subjects behind ‑ speechless. The diverse series contains portraits of politicians, publicists, football supporters, babies and Dutch writers. In the exhibition ‘Lost and Found’, the series is supplemented by portraits of American writers, some well known, some less familiar.
The other
series from which work is displayed bears the title ‘The Man Who (Dis-)Appeared’,
a reference to Kafka’s first, uncompleted novel ‘America’. In this series of
works, the artist creates a visual analogy between the immigration process that
he underwent when he wanted to settle in New York and topical news items in
which the degeneration of bureaucratic procedures plays an important role.
According to Thomassen, virtually every bureaucratic procedure leads to the
depersonalisation or, worse still, the dehumanisation of the individual who is a
‘victim’ of this procedure. At the same time, the vertical hierarchy of
bureaucracy ensures that the ‘culprit’ who is responsible remains out of the
line of fire.The image, indelibly printed on the retina, of the Abu Ghraib
prisoner became a symbol of an American government that adopted torture as part
of its national security policy and for which nobody is ever likely to be held
accountable.
While Thomassen is flitting back and forth between ‘his business’ and ‘other
business’ that fills the 24-hour news cycle, he tries to determine his position
on these politically loaded issues and poses questions about responsibility. The
responsibility of the person depicted, the other person, the observer and the
media, but especially – and more than ever – his own responsibility: as a human,
as an artist and as an immigrant in the ‘promised land’.