This Is Not A Tender World
2021
Acrylic on hessian canvas
31 x 124 x 5 cm
RT4A2103
Courtesy of the artist
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rt4a, This Is Not A Tender World, 2022, 02’27” ©rt4a
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This is not a Tender World engenders a sense of nostalgia by employing the childlike aesthetics synonymous with Lily van der Stokker’s works. Stokker, renowned for her enlarged pastel installations that play with societal norms, nudges viewers to confront the disparity between childhood naiveté and the often stark realities of adulthood.
Suspended amidst waves of green and blue, the sentence appears almost ethereal – lost in a cloud between terrestrial grasslands and the expanse of an azure sky. The colour palette, reminiscent of innocence and infantile daydreams, is deliberately discordant with the jarring reality enunciated by the phrase itself.
Rendered in the Croissant font by Philip Kelly (1978), it evokes a bygone era. The typographic choice is laden with cultural significance, harking back to the first Purple Prose issues helmed by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm in the 1990s.
The accompanying song, drenched in the melancholic tonalities of post-punk, becomes an audible manifestation of the painting’s sentiment.
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