FIRST NEW YORK MUSEUM PRESENTATION OF THE WORK OF PIETER LAURENS MOL AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Projects: Pieter Laurens Mol
September 19–November 12, 1996
Recent multi-media conceptual work by the Dutch artist Pieter Laurens Mol (b.
1946) is the subject of the next Projects show, on view at The Museum of Modern
Art from September 19 to November 12, 1996. While Mol's work has been shown in
Europe for the past twenty-five years, PROJECTS: PIETER LAURENS MOL is the
artist's first New York museum exhibition. The poetic quality, ironic wit,
undertone of melancholy, and juxtaposition of unusual materials and objects
apparent in Mol's installations place him within the post-World War II European
tradition of the art of Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Joseph Beuys, and Marcel
Broodthaers.
"Materials are at the center of [Mol's] attention," states Magdalena Dabrowski,
Senior Curator, Department of Drawings, who organized the exhibition. "Every
piece shows his deliberate interest in exploring their diversity, their special
inner content, and their potential for creating expressive tension and energy.
It is this spectacular sensitivity to materials and the constant search for
their proper balance that informs Mol's creative process."
Mol's art defies a single stylistic category, although his interests in Dutch
history, seventeenth-century painting, and the relationship between space and
time remain constant themes. His emphasis on the investigation of states of
mind, the expression of emotions, and the examination of matter and spirit
imbues his art with a mystical, almost hermetic feeling that invites the viewer
to decode it through protracted contemplation. His work shows great diversity,
encompassing and often combining photography, painting, drawing, sculpture,
mixed media objects, and installation.
In all his installations, Mol strives for a perfect balance between
contemplation and visual beauty. For example, he creates a reflective inner
space in Course into Calm (1994), an installation composed of a table
with an open drawer in which a night moth sleeps under glass. Above the table
hangs a small drawing: a simple horizontal line in charcoal. "With the drawer
half-open, it is a very delicate tranquil moment," remarks Mol. "That is a
quality I would particularly like to introduce to the viewer in New York—so
full of noise and commotion—because I think it is extremely Dutch or perhaps
European; it has a special impact."
In several new works created for this exhibition, such as Vigilantia
(1996), The Dream Estate (1996), and The Chromatics of Fatigue
(1996), Mol uses Saturnian and Marsian mythologies as metaphors for states of
mind. Employing everyday objects with zinc and lead (materials associated with
the planets Saturn and Mars), Mol creates an unusual play of materials as he
attempts to extract their metaphorical meaning out of the literal. "These works
have powerful effects, aggressively intruding into the viewer's virtual space
and causing him to contemplate diverse aspects and juxtapositions of urban and
natural environments, to discover new realms of experience," writes Ms.
Dabrowski.
The Museum's PROJECTS series is dedicated to the work of contemporary artists
who are not widely known in New York. The series is made possible by the
Contemporary Exhibition Fund of The Museum of Modern Art, established with
gifts from Lily Auchincloss, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, and Mr. and Mrs.
Ronald S. Lauder; and grants from The Contemporary Arts Council and The Junior
Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, and Susan G. Jacoby. Additional support
for this exhibition is provided by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, and The
International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
For further information contact Uri Perrin, Department of Communications,
212/708–9757.
