For my works of art I let myself be guided by the often unnoticed course of things. Such as a growth process of a plant, accumulations and remains of ever important stories on paper, the speed of our vehicles, the man-made spaces and structures that disintegrate again. Time brings a constant tension between change and the human tendency to hold on to what was. In the world formed by human hands, I see a snapshot of a transformation with the interaction between nature and human nature. These are processes that take place both in society, in our psyche, and in nature. Man’s eternal search for a balance between the artificial and the natural, the pursuit and the letting go, the mind and the feeling I see as processes in which growth and decay form the basis. The technological progress with, for example, globalization, virtualization and artificial body parts as a result, changes man at how he looks at his world and himself. As a result, people are repeatedly forced to search for what feels like their own ‘nature’. Through renewal and aging, parts of our spiritual and physical worlds can alienate from us, be forgotten or not yet finished. I see in this the beauty, strength and vulnerability of man. I seek the truth behind the everyday and try, as it were, to find the mechanics that drive human existence. I do this, for example, by looking for villages that are in decline, where traces of the human world are dissected by natural forces and organisms, which are actually always below the surface of a human’s life.
I translate my way of looking into sculptures, installations, photographs and animated films. The artworks are architectural and panoramic in nature. They show contemporary-looking places, but are still and seem to have withdrawn from the issues of the day. In making my artworks I do not strive for an absolute representation of the world, but for expressing the ever-changing way in which my subjective perception and my perceived environment coincide. This always goes hand in hand with a sense of awe for nature and the dynamics, patterns and processes that go with it. I use animation techniques a lot to show the dimension of time and thus the changeability of things. Other works, such as photographs and sculptures, stand still at a certain point of a transformation or movement. By lines, perspectives or spatiality these works seem solidified and present in their silent movement. They are balancing on a tipping point, as the silence prior to a new dynamic. I want people to undergo my artworks, and experience that nothing stands still. I invite the viewer to surrender to the emotional and psychological side of the changeable. And I want to show that the nature of time and space, the frameworks within which changeability can play, depends on the way you look at this.
Elise van der Linden