Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (b.1951, Antwerp) explores the relationship between art, science and social reality. She has been prolific since the early 1980s in her output of drawings, collages on paper and synthetic material, as well as short films and animations. She observes the abhorrent and the obscene in society from a female point of view and often flirts with the boundaries of the permissible. An unequivocally feminist tone pervades in all her work, in which the erotic meets machine fetishism. Interior, or even domestic spaces, serve as settings for her drawings and collages, in which dream-like, futuristic enactments between human and machine-like forms unfold. In the 1990s, hand-made paper works gave way to computer graphics and multimedia installations. Since then, her creative focus has been on images in which the female figure plays a prominent role, in an ongoing examination of the essence of pornographic pleasure. Her forceful visual language tends towards nihilism and avoids moralistic undertones. Text has always featured alongside image, giving poetic expression to the message of the proud, sometimes exhibitionistic, female figures that inhabit her work, much like song lyrics. In parallel to her visual output, music is important in her creative universe. Performing with Danny Devos under the band name Club Moral, she has stood firmly on Antwerp's experimental music scene since 1981. Published to accompany an exhibition in the Renaissance Society of Chicago University from September 25 until December 18 2011 and in Mu.Zee (Ostend, Belgium) from February 18 until May 27 2012. AUTHOR: Hamza Walker is a curator for the Renaissance Society in Chicago. With contributions by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Phillip Van den Bossche and Dirk Snauwaert. ILLUSTRATIONS: 200 colour
