Anxious Still Lifes That Fascinate the Eye

September 30, 2018

Galerie Bonnard in the Netherlands is presenting more than 30 works by the still life painter Mario ter Braak (b. 1960) in the new exhibition Venster (“Window”). His quotidian subjects, meticulous brushwork, and vibrant coloring seem to place this Dutch artist in the realist camp, yet when we look more carefully, we realize something unusual is happening.

These arrangements of fruits and fish on tables, sinks, and basins certainly resemble still lifes, yet they can also be perceived as thoroughly individual entities, with their own shadows and perspectives. It is this approach to the objects — ter Braak calls them bodies — that places him in the borderland of realist and modernist art. These are objects from the world as we see it, but perceived from different angles, just as Cézanne and the Cubists once did. They are anxious still lifes that fascinate the eye, even as they unsettle the mind.