Bewitched is comprised of a series of highly detailed drawings and elaborate installation marked by gloomy romance and gothic sensibility. The three artists’ work is connected by themes of menace, obsession, and madness, reflecting the insecurity and instability of the 21st century world.

Elena Beelaerts' work is distinguished by a focus on the more intimate parts, both visible and invisible, of the human body, animals, and microbes. Her installation "Life and Times of My Parasite" confronts us with the colorful but unmanageable world of microbiology. Warped by arbitrary mutation, the parasite serves as both a messenger of doom and of joy, an illustration of the function of natural selection.

Iris van Dongen's pastels of mysterious, ethereal women are wicked portraits of the black magic trapping of the beautiful, the vain, and the damned. Loaded with symbolism, her pastels refer to the cannon of art history as well as contemporary concerns plucked from everyday life. Van Dongen combines sensual patterns of Gustav Klimt, and the vanitas symbols of 17th Century Dutch still lives, with tattoos and other iconography of gothic youth culture.

Dieuwke Spaans' work is visceral and blood thirsty. Often executed upon found photographs, her drawings tell a macabre story of lust and aversion, doom and decline. With Spaans drawings as our guide we enter the tragic world of Dorian Gray, one that presents us with the hard reality beneath the surface of seductive exteriors.

clementine
623 West 27th Street
New York, NY
tel: 212-243-5937
fax: 212-243-3927
Summer gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 11-6pm