The collage-like canvases of Daleen Bloemers (1990) bring together all kinds of clues and signs. These include beginning brush strokes that suddenly come to a halt, a kind of ‘headfooter’ children’s drawing and wild pencil scratches, alongside photographs of skin folds, and a digitally deformed portrait. These images and signs are sometimes covered by semi-transparent layers, or a web of lines that makes you lose your way in this playful yet unfamiliar visual story. Bloemers’ main preoccupation is combining all these separate elements to create a free and simultaneously exciting composition.
The artist finds inspiration in the straightforward creativity of her three-year-old twins who put pencil to paper without inhibition or constraints. This intuitive and open attitude sharply contrasts with the adult world where expectations, meaning, and interactions have gotten stuck in fixed frameworks and patterns. In order to break free from these — also in her own work —, Bloemers draws parallels between the children’s minds and the first AI image generators that made random and direct combinations. This often leads to surprising images. Both children’s minds and AI have to work within set parameters that have no real meaning yet, and both have a tendency to fill empty spaces in remarkable ways. In her work, Bloemers brings together digital and analogue elements in a wide variety of materials and in unexpected constellations. All things have equal merit. While searching for the field of tension between childlike innocence and adult insights, the works prompt us to forge new connections.
Text: Esther Darley
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang