How does a work of art acquire value and meaning? What are the processes at play? And what is the artist’s role in all of this? These are the recurrent themes in the oeuvre of Daniëlle van Ark (The Netherlands, 1974-). Her work raises questions about value and authenticity, particularly in the field of photography: the reproducible medium par excellence. Interested in “opaque systems of value creation”, van Ark explores the mechanisms through which certain objects and images acquire status within the unwritten rules of the artworld, in a specific time frame.
Van Ark often begins her works with found materials. ‘Things’ that have been part of history or someone else’s life, and which are seen by her as residues of human existence. By collecting these materials and recontextualising them in her works, van Ark is interested in how they generate new meanings within the contemporary artworld. Questions of value, materiality, and time are central to her approach to photography as a reproducible medium.
The start of the collaboration between Daniëlle van Ark and FLAT // LAND involves five artworks which will be shown at the MIA Photo Fair (Milan, 10th -14th April, 2024):
- ‘Pair of Cranes, the shot that missed the Tsar’ and ‘A Meissen bird group, A Meissen dinner service’ (from the series In Retrospect, 2014, Pigment prints on Hahnemühle Baryta, respectively 85 x 71,5 cm and 83,7 x 53,5 cm, Edition of 5 + 2 AP each).
- ‘Uniform’ (2015, Pigment print on Hahnemühle Baryta, 34 x 25 cm, Edition of 5 + 2 AP).
- ‘Landscape 01’ and ‘Landscape 02’ (from the series The Nature of Rorschach, 2017, Pigment prints on Hahnemühle Baryta, 82 x 114,5 cm each, Edition of 5 + 2 AP each).
The photographs ‘Pair of Cranes, the shot that missed the Tsar’ and ‘A Meissen bird group, A Meissen dinner service’ are part of the series ‘In Retrospect’ (2014). For these works, Daniëlle van Ark tore pages of art catalogues from Tefaf and Sotheby’s in which the whole spectrum of art history makes an appearance. By placing selected torn pages on top of a lightbox and photographing the appearing imagery with an analogue camera, Van Ark plays with the overlaying of worlds, materials, and times pre-existing on both sides of the pages. In ‘A Meissen bird group, A Meissen dinner service’, Meissen porcelain models representative of the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, morph into one image. In ‘Pair of Cranes, the shot that missed the Tsar’, a pair of porcelain cranes evocative of the 18th Century Chinese Qing dynasty is merged with a bullet which missed the Russian Czar in 1905. All guided by Van Ark’s acute aesthetic sense. In an era in which we are overloaded with the mechanical reproduction of images on a daily basis, ‘In Retrospect’ plays with the power of the artist to combine residues of different times and playfully bring them back to life, by re-contextualising them within the contemporary artworld.
The photograph ‘Uniform’ (2015) portrays an installation made by Daniëlle van Ark with used jackets, in a style commonly worn in the past two decades. Placed on a custom-made coat hanger, the row of jackets is made to look familiar, or even homely, reminding the viewer of a similar style which they may have worn. The apparent banality of the scene, however, is contrasted with the staged similarity between the jackets which, upon a closer look, appear to have a similar fur around their necks – more specifically, fox fur.
In ‘Uniform’, Van Ark contrasts the apparent banality of the jackets with the obscene reality of the fur industry which, obscured by fashion trends, is ignored by many. The work explores the mechanisms through which certain objects – such as the jackets – become icons of a time and are used as symbols of status within social groups. But, with a tinge of irony, ‘Uniform’ also invites the viewer to consider that the apparent familiarity of objects often hides less-desirable elements, associated with their processes of production – such as fur industry practices. What aspects of an image do we, as part of a consumer society, (choose to) ignore?
The works ‘Landscape 01’ and ‘Landscape 02’, both from the series ‘The Nature of Rorschach’ (2017), are enlarged photographs of used landscape postcards collected by Daniëlle van Ark. Rotated 90 degrees, the images appear as if taken from Rorschach inkblot psychological tests, inviting the viewer to reflect on how we view artworks – or rather, on the processes which turn everyday-life objects into art. These images were first used in Van Ark’s waiting-room installation ‘I wait, I wait, I wait’, exhibited in her solo at the De Nederlandsche Bank (Amsterdam, 2018).
Detached from the postcards and from the installation room, the photographs hold a double-absence. They invite us to ponder where the postcards may have travelled, and what functions they may have fulfilled, before being regarded as one of the most sublime art forms: landscape photography. With one simple gesture of turning the images, Daniëlle van Ark playfully shows us that our perspective on images is dependent on opaque systems of value that exist beyond our individual control – but which she, in the controlled environment of her atelier, defiantly attempts to take a hold on. Or, at least, which she defiantly attempts to materialise, in a more transparent way.
Daniëlle van Ark studied at the KABK in The Hague and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She has exhibited internationally and was nominated for several prizes like the Steenbergen Stipendium, the Bouw in Beeld Prijs (2011) and the Nationale Portretprijs (2012). In 2012, Museum van Loon hosted her solo exhibition ‘FOAM in van Loon III’. In 2018, her solo exhibition Artist’s Proof was on view at Foam Museum. Several corporations and institutions have work by Daniëlle in their collections, such as the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ABN AMRO Bank, Amsterdam Medical Center, FOAM Museum, Museum Voorlinden, and SBK.