NEWS

March 15 - June 9, 2024
(performance and installation) Yokohama Triennale
The Ecstatic Being, Yokohama (JPN)
March 24, 2024
ART Masereel, Print art fair, Kasterlee (BE)
April 25 - 28, 2024
(performance and installation) 10N booth, Art Brussels
Girl lives in the village. Sculptress. If you must know., Brussels (BE)



PERFORMANCE AND  INSTALLATION

Girl lives in the village. Sculptress. If you must know.


The orange atmosphere experienced when entering the exhibition is the result of a distinct range of wavelengths within the visible spectrum. The name of this colour is derived from the homonymous fruit, which procures this colour from carotenes, a photosynthetic pigment that converts sunlight into chemical energy. In fact, while we call the fruit orange, it actually retains every other colour whilst rejecting the orange frequency. The colour orange is associated with fire, energy, amusement, danger, extraversion and the unconventional, as well as with taste and aroma. Next to being an important colour in Hinduism and Buddhism, it has a well established connection with the Netherlands through the House of Orange. The current chromatic circumstances are presumed to be connected to the origins of the girl in question.

While the basis of the module has been made orange, an adjacent separate space emits pure white light. Two separate growing processes integrate the pigments dissolved into the water: the creation of a crystal structure, and the absorption by the vascular system of the carnations. The organic and mineral kingdoms depicting the dance of the spheres.

Skylight domes are produced from thermoformed polycarbonate, and intended to allow natural zenith light into vast interior spaces. Optimal lighting in buildings is an essential factor for physical and mental performance. In the absence of daylight, the constellation of artificially illuminated skylights presented reveals a variety of inner worlds. Each separate sphere contains the fruits of a different participating person, the Doors of Perception copied on their own printer, each page with personal annotations. Finally the filled forms are scanned into the mother machine, back into the hive mind.

Myrthe van der Mark retraces the hidden pathways of ancient teachings in her elusive practice. Using seemingly trivial elements we encounter in daily life, she triggers presence of mind in the present moment through the evocation of distant times and places. Researching texts devised to guide us out of the psychic entanglement with the abstract concepts that slowly cemented the fortifications of our worldview into a gilded cage, an entropic network started to unfold.

Scattered around the world wide web, labyrinthine libraries and sacred spaces of social harmony, rumours of Mazdaznan leading from the Temple Association through the Brotherhood to the occult origins of Bauhaus crossed with parallel paths. Traces of Bas Jan Ader’s ultimate expedition via Ouspensky’s writings and The Fourth Way by Gurdjieff’s legacy to Theosophy, Sufism and Tantrism. Having had an Anthroposophical education incorporated into a performing arts initiation herself, the resonance of these complementary voices started synchronizing into a transcendental (celestial) choir.

Upon reading Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, we come across the first page, dedicated: ‘For M’. Myrthe accepted the Gift of several dozens of friends, relatives and different people encountered  by chance along the way, who each marked their passage through the pages of this remarkable document in their own particular style, from their personal perspective, connecting the specific to the universal in their own individual  form.

Excerpt of the exhibition text by Petrus Paklons

Curated by Charlotte Crevits
Presented Cc Strombeek
Strombeek



PERFORMANCE

IT, IT IS USUAL TO ADD ROSE WHICH IS FOUR ROWS. IT IS USUAL TO ADD IT.

For Beyond the Black Box, Myrthe van der Mark presented a new performance and room-sized installation on both the ephemeralness and sturdiness of life.

Through this work, Van der Mark explored the symbolism of braids, the colours of mourning, accompanying scents, flower arrangements, architectural clothing, accessories, tableware and small, elaborate hair works. Touching upon the world of object and speech, Van der Mark weaved together contemporary life, as if it was a non-narrative film with its own laws. A landscape, a portrait, a still life. In collaboration with Joachim Badenhorst.

Curated by Lisa Wiegel
Presented de Brakke Grond
Amsterdam


PERFORMANCE

at this height, but not yet in it fullness (Vleeshal)

Commissioned by Vleeshal and in collaboration with Zeeland Airport, Myrthe van der Mark presented the performance at this height, but not yet in its fullness, inspired by the existing elements at the airport. The choreography partly took place on the runway of the airport, intriguingly intertwining specific processes of communication, maintenance, and language in a dynamic game of movement.

The performance took place on November 25 during the ‘golden hour’ from 3.45 to 4.45 pm at Zeeland Airport. The performance could also to be followed remotely through the webcam of the airport. Stills of the video registration of the webcam footage below.

Curated by Adriënne van der Werf
Presented Zeeland Airport
Arnemuiden



at this height, but not yet in it fullness

A single title for all my upcoming performances and shows that take place in 2023 - in between brackets where the work will be presented or performed.



PERFORMANCE

at this height, but not yet in it fullness (MDD)

Myrthe van der Mark performs at this height, but not yet in it fullness (MDD) especially for the museum, working with rituals, life cycles, and the four classical elements.

Curated by Laurens Otto
Presented Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
Deurle

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at this height, but not yet in it fullness

A single title for all my performances and shows that take place in 2023 -
in between brackets where the work will be presented or performed.



PERFORMANCE 

SWEAT

When I asked the curator to lock me up in a black box for the duration of the opening to make a contemporary cave painting

Myrthe van der Mark's SWEAT distills the atmospheres of other times and spaces.  Membranes impregnated with molecules and meanings, like the shirt your father was wearing during his last hours in this realm of physical bodies. The pictures printed by the shop around the corner with the residues of your rhizomatic residency and summer holiday memories of our own travels and those of unknown others. The allegory of the cave painting, a speleologist in a black box inside a white cube in search of the origins of creation like Schrödinger's Cat.

Curated by Avee Gallery
Presented rhizome_
Kortrijk