Spens 2007 70,5x51 cm

“From the days of my childhood, I remember this experiment: you repeated a word — e.g. chair or chimney — until it detached itself from its meaning. The word then no longer referred to its content: it had become a series of letters in a row, a meaningless item. One can experience the same feeling browsing through one of those glossy magazines in which the designer plays with a varied array of colour. Usually we quickly leaf through these magazines, but sometimes our attention is captured by a single page and we begin to ask ourselves questions. What is the foreground, what is background? What was printed first, what was printed over it? There is something illusory about both experiences. It is as if there is a moment when the brain rushes ahead of our sensory perception.

Annerel’s paintings themselves turn out to be illusory. What at first sight seems to be a two-dimensional area, may prove to consist of various superimposed layers; what seems to be painted, may be tape; what seems anchored in abstraction, is sometimes based on a figurative element.

Seeking inspiration in cheap fabrics and objects that are typical of the downmarket shops in the average shopping street-dishcloths in shamelessly swearing colours, the
red-white-blue or yellow-orange-green bags people so often use to carry their laundry to the laundrette-but also in the tritest images from magazines, Annerel carefully constructs his chequered patterns. On rare occasions he even uses these materials as support. On these he interweaves bands of colour and bright.

But in Annerel's game of knowing and recognizing, the stakes are much higher. The fundamental issue in this instance, is how art relates to reality—how the image relates to the object that is being depicted. It's about the illusion that causes fiction and reality to merge seamlessly.

Wedgewood 2007 73x53 cm

Annerel's entire oeuvre engages in this deceptive play of fact and fiction. Stripes of colour or small details seem be on top of other elements, but actually they are underneath. The question of what is true and what is fabricated thus no longer relates to reality, but to its representation—to the image itself. Other areas seem to be made with tape, but are actually colour fields that skilfully imitate tape: the artist no longer represents reality, but rather the material with which he creates his illusions.