Julie van der Vaart‘s Blind Spot (VOID, 2022) aims to reconcile the body with geological formations that illustrate the schism between the notion of time and its readability by the mind and body of humankind. A long-term project, the book is a thick volume of van der Vaart’s photographs veiled in chemical play and a skin of metaphor for the human body therein. The chemical challenges to the artist’s prints play on the body, its scars, blemishes, and inconsistencies. This same scratchy and imperfect way of producing work via process alchemy is also transposed throughout the landscapes. It is in some ways reminiscent of a whole host of Flemish female authors from Margaret Lansink, Elizabeth Alderliesten, and Mo Verlaan, who employ these types of images to create a visceral world in which haze, memory, and temporal readings of images become the core pursuit of their work next to the treatment of the human body…
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I don’t come away with the concept matching the images outside of a suggestion of the body and its geological counterpart. I wonder how much of this concept was fashioned towards the end of the project when a concept was needed for a press release. Still, as mentioned above, perhaps that is to relay the condition between the mind/body/time as nearly impossible to see/utilize outside of its abstractions. If I were to suggest any deviation, it would be to suggest that the book is a bit small for the ambition presented. It is slightly hard to immerse myself in the world van der Vaart has created because of this, and I think half the pages and double the size might have been a better solution…”
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Original Press Release and Specifications
Blind Spot
19,5 x 26 cm 152 pages 750 copies Silkscreened + Foiled Hardcover
ISBN 978-618-5479-24-4
Published by VOID
Julie van der Vaart is a photographic artist and educator born in Maastricht, The Netherlands, and currently living and working in Belgium. She has a Masters of Fine-arts in Photography from the Media, Arts & Design-faculty in Genk, and a further Masters of Research in Art and Design from Sint Lucas Antwerp. She is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, receiving the stipend for established artists, and since 2021 she has been participating in the two-year international Masterclass Reflexions 2.0.
Supported by Mondrian Fonds