Lily van der StokkerSupervert's review of an exhibit featuring the psychedelic works of artist Lily van der Stokker. Originally published in Artforum Magazine (Summer 1994). Exhibit at the Feature Gallery, New York If exuberance were king and wanted to hire a court painter, it could do no better than to put Lily van der Stokker on the royal payroll. The artist's wall paintings and drawings — equal parts Age of the Baroque, Age of Aquarius, and age of adolescence — appear to strive for Sheer Exuberance as much as platonic philosophy strives for the Ideal. The dialectic, however, is not among van der Stokker's tools, but rather dynamic lines reminiscent of Bernini, Borromini, and chemistry notebook doodlings, vivid hues reminiscent of early 70's concert posters, and flowers — lots and lots of flowers, all in full evidence in the two wall paintings that dominated the show. If you took two psychedelic clouds — ones that didn't produce acid rain but just plain acid — threw them into two opposite corners of the gallery and saw them stick there in unpredictably groovy patterns the color of cotton candy and orange creamsicles, you'd have Mud Honey and Curlique (both works 1994). While the two paintings have carefully contrived shapes and internal symmetries — the corner acts as a fulcrum between the mirror-image halves of any given design — like Baroque paintings that spill out of their frames, Mud Honey and Curlique look as if they have only just begun to take up a wall. They're the ticket that exploded: come back in a week and you expect them to have proliferated, maybe even have billowed out from the walls in big pink clouds that smell of Pez. Trying to describe van der Stokker's works, it's understandable why psychedelic lingo is chock full of trippy agglomerations of words like "plastic exploding inevitable" and "kandy-kolored tangerine-flake streamline baby." How else can you describe a decorative eruption of pink regalia such as van der Stokker's drawing Explosion of Love (1991-1993)? Perhaps it's symbolic that van der Stokker makes all her drawings in magic marker: like Puff the Magic Dragon, like a drug experience, a work such as Explosion of Love exceeds the humdrum rhythm of daily life that words generally dance to. Even when van der Stokker herself occasionally includes words in her paintings and drawings — in Explosion of Love, "LOVE + WORK" hover in a pink design that looks like the headboard of the king or queen's bed — the words are there simply to exuberate: love and work! In a 1994 drawing, it's as if the artist can't contain her enthusiasm for her favorite sex kittens and just has to name them all: RuPaul, Annie Sprinkle, Dolly Parton, La Cicciolina, Brigitte Bardot. Or perhaps the title of a 1993 drawing says it all: I Love it. Of course you do, Lily, and if you ever finish with your brilliant decorations for the palace of exuberance, perhaps you can look to fervor or frenzy for patronage. Email this page to a friendTell someone about Lily van der Stokker at supervert.com. (Email addresses are not recorded or used in any way.) Your name
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