SLEEP WITH ME
An installation at Van Zijll Langhout/ Contemporary Art
In between bare, white walls with no tales to tell, an intimate space presents itself: a bed. A bed in a gallery. A nest in the white cube. Intimacy, vulnerability and deceleration assert themselves in a room that usually revolves around speed, change, and consumption. What happens at the intersection of these two kinds of space, these objects that inhabit and surround each other? And how do the artist, the audience and the gallery owner relate to this field of tension?
In SLEEP WITH ME, artist Marijn Bax interrogates the ways in which people navigate the realms of intimacy and commerce, the private and the public. And she asks how our need for self-representation takes shape on – and is shaped by – social media.
The work of in-situ artist Marijn Bax originates in and from the actual, physical locations in which it can be viewed. These are man-made spaces, entered, occupied and exited by people. In what ways, Bax wants to know, do place and space shape our experiences? How do they influence our perceptions, feelings and beliefs? And what does it mean for your experience and role as a viewer if you need to make an effort in order to view a work, if the work demands your physical relocation and if your presence changes the work itself?
With her in-situ art, Bax leaves the immediate and the omnipresent for what they are, and focuses instead on the local, the slow, and the specific. In order to experience SLEEP WITH ME, you need to go to bed with it – literally.
