Saturday July 6, I went to the graduates exhibition 2013 of the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, BSc en MsC. Like in my blog about this expo in Utrecht I describe 3 students of the Fine Arts group.

Alina Eliza Smocov  makes almost monochromatic paintings of human body parts, in which she tries to  give a deep meaning to the word “silence”. Indeed the works transpire quietness, very serene.

Margina Ruiter disputes Wittgenstein’s dictum “What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence”. In her art she tells about those things we cannot say, which probably is the heart of all art.

Inèz van Dillen researches the possibility of a work to be a work of art. This research is not about what cannot be said, but about what cannot be known. Her graphic work “Monade” shows vulnerability and shows us a new way of looking.

Graduates 2013 was a nice and lively exhibition in a nice building at a beautiful location.

Yesterday to NK Gallery Antwerp. Works by Sabine Pigalle: very nice. Open until 29 June. www.nkgallery.be

The Epona group visited the Mike Kelley exhibition in Amsterdam and had a lively discussion. We were impressed by the variety of media used: drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, video, writing, etc. We discussed the work called More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid from 1987, a mess of used rag dolls, animals and blankets strewn across a canvas. The group had many questions: Why do we like it? Why is this art? What is the pathos in this fictional childhood work? The work Pay for Your Pleasure, a gallery of portraits of poets, philosophers and artists with at the end a painting created by a convicted Dutch criminal, -who we did not know-, was subject to critique. Why not use the original, often French or German language for these quotes? And writing Rim Baud as two words is unforgivable. We surely did not like the pornographic themes, but some of us would like to have the work with found pearls above our sofa. The biologists among us asked whether the artist had realized that in his bird’s cage, referring to Catholicism with a small gate for the hard way and a large one for the easy way, for real birds both are easy, since the small gate is used by small birds. Our discussions went on for days by email.