Charlotte Schleiffert / Kirsten Geisler

Charlotte Schleiffert dares to take on serious themes, but often depicts them with a light touch. This is especially the case with her (usually thinly applied) paintings, in which she depicts subjects such as prostitution, power and oppression against a white background. In her large drawings, the visual effect is the opposite. These are drawn in layers using pastels and acrylics. Schleiffert’s drawings are frequently comments on images she comes across in the media. The women, who present themselves to the viewer in a provocative manner, display the attributes of pin-ups or models, but then surprise one unexpectedly with male contours or androgynous characteristics. Or they completely hide their faces behind ritual masks, as is the case in her recent drawings.

In her exhibition Rozen en Pistolen (Roses and Pistols) in Museum Het Domein (10.09.2011 - 22.01.2012), the theme of the hybrid being is the leitmotiv running through Charlotte Schleiffert’s recent drawings. They unite different cultures, times and genders. Her exhibition at AKINCI, which opens on 14 January 2012, is also dominated by beings that blur the distinction between animal and human, or man and woman. Schleiffert is famous for her ability to combine western and oriental ideals of beauty in one and the same drawing to create exciting and poignant images. In her exhibition at AKINCI, the apparitions completely transcend their social, historical and cultural context. With great skill, Schleiffert creates the androgynous or even hybrid ‘homo universalis’ on high heels or cowboy boots and swathed in a brightly coloured suit, above which an elk's skull towers on the neck of a giraffe.

Kirsten Geisler - At 6 pm on 4 February 2011, Maya Brush was born in the Netherlands Institute for Media Art. AKINCI will repeat the spectacular virtual ‘birth’ of this ‘Homo Virtualis’ from 14 January to 18 February 2012.

Maya Brush is the first virtual beauty. She is an artificially created body, based on human ideals of beauty without any real example as a starting point. As a model, she is the dream of an ideal beauty that has turned into reality. Maya Brush represents all global ‘prefab girls’: the standardised and technically or surgically manipulated beauties that we see extolled in advertising and the media. The virtual sculpture ‘Maya Brush’ was developed by Kirsten Geisler over the last three years and will really come to life starting with the exhibition at AKINCI.

Charlotte Schleiffert - Mr Routledge and the Lions and
Kirsten Geisler - The First Virtual Birth (Maya Brush)