Black tulip, glasshouse

2012
Kiaer, Ian
Ian Kiaer revisits a premise he has explored through a number of years and museum shows: Alexandre Dumas’s, 'The Black Tulip'. Like the nineteenth-century novelist, Kiaer is attracted by the idea of continually returning to what some believe is a redundant endeavour. For Dumas’s Dutch protagonist that was to attempt to breed an unnaturally-hued, perfectly black flower. For Kiaer, it is to make paintings after paintings. 'Black Tulip, Glasshouse', comprises a white screen hanging low from the ceiling with a projected image of a white cloth with an embroidered floral motif. On the wall hangs a drawing of a sixteenth-century watercolour by the Huguenot artist Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, portraying a woman's body covered in tattoos of tulips and other flowers. The model is a fragment of a glasshouse designed for a private house in Dublin by the Irish iron-founder Richard Turner. Each element of the work brings to attention equivalent notions of cultivation, refinement and composition that occur in both glasshouse and studio. Catherine Antoni
  • Artwork Details: 121.9 x 91.4 x 36cm 61 x 80cm 137.2 x 129.5cm 29.8 x 54.6 x 30.5cm
  • Edition:
  • Material description: Pencil, acrylic, tape, canvas, taffeta, lighting gel, perspex, polystyrene, cardboard, plastic. copper wire, projection screen, slide projector, 35mm slide
  • Credit line: © the artist.
  • Theme:
  • Medium: Installation
  • Accession number: ACC10/2013

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