prismatic time

Erica van Zon

6 April - 2 May 2010 in the Square² Gallery

ERICA VAN ZON
6 April – 2 May 2010
Prismatic Time  2009
DVD
Duration: 10 minutes: 42 seconds, looped
Courtesy the artist.

Erica van Zon’s work is made in response to a 1974 film by conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, Primary Time. The original work was based on a flower arrangement using only flowers in primary colours. In van Zon’s film, the flower arrangement is performed by the artist using a variety of colours, and travels through the colour spectrum. Both artists are from Dutch backgrounds, and van Zon’s use of the tulip flower (among others) makes symbolic reference to their shared heritage. Prismatic Time adopts the earlier work’s domestic scale and ‘feminine’ response to minimalism in art.   

The art of flower arrangement is focused on as a kind of choreography, so that the work’s composition becomes an active one. The conventions governing the composition of a picture plane also apply to the disciplined art form which is flower arrangement (in particular through the Japanese art of Ikebana), with emphasis placed upon shape, line, form and colour. Despite having gone to some lengths to learn the technique and method of arrangement, there is something slightly home-made or haphazard about the arrangement in Prismatic Time. The artist faithfully performs the ‘perfect’ flower arrangement, and this process echoes her act of re-staging Ader’s original.

Erica van Zon (born 1979) is based in Wellington. She completed a Masters in Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Art in 2007, where her graduation piece was the recreation of a film set from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Recent exhibitions include ‘Shock! Horror! Suspense!’ at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts in Pakuranga, and a self-titled show at Starkwhite, Auckland. She continues to work in a diverse range of media, including performance, and on projects including self-published books, DJing with cassette tapes, and styling. Van Zon is currently working on a rug based on paintings in the Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas.