Menno Pasveer (b. 1998, NL) has long depicted labour, often the kind that goes unnoticed. His previous works have depicted manual labourers such as cleaners and arborists, decked out with mops, chainsaws and hardhats. In this new body of work, presented at MOYA, Oosterhout, in collaboration with Semester9, Pasveer does away with the workers, and shows only the tools of their labour. Screws, bleach, hammers and metal polish – familiar objects found in grocery or hardware stores, yet here, rendered so large they are almost human-scale, they become strange and unfamiliar.
Pasveer’s work is inspired by philosopher Alain de Botton, who frames art as a tool, as an object which helps us complete a task which is necessary but we cannot do on our own. As de Botton says: “a knife is a response to our need, yet inability, to cut,” these tools allow us to reach beyond the constraints of our body and to complete tasks beyond our individual capabilities. Art can follow this same function, and be used as a tool through which we can better engage with our emotions and our surroundings.
De Botton continues that one should focus on the smaller things in life, the mundanity of the everyday. He argues that by noticing small things we can appreciate them again, and thus we can recalibrate our relationship to our surroundings, society and ourselves, explaining that “art can do the opposite of glamorising the unattainable: it can reawaken us to the genuine merit of life as we’re forced to lead it.” By appreciating the fabric of everyday life, by slowing down and noticing the things which surround us but we often take for granted, we can live more peacefully in our surroundings, and become more content with our lives and our work.
The products depicted in Pasveer’s work are hyper-present in our homes and offices, moving between our public and private lives, constantly present but rarely noticed. In this way they are slippery, not quite tangible. They are at once invisible and hyper-present. By taking these objects out of their obscure omnipresence, and transplanting them to a museum setting Pasveer decontextualises and valorises them, highlighting their everyday mundanity. The claims emblazoned on the front of these packages, bottles and tools, often ignored in their original context, take on a strange tone here. Claiming to be the best, strongest, fastest, they make bold claims to their own ability to labour; modest objects making arrogant claims.
Highlighting the physicality of the labour he himself is doing, Pasveer paints the objects with a variety of different techniques. Loose, airy brushstrokes inspired by the likes of Tuymans contrast with near-photorealistic renderings, highlighting and reinforcing their status as representations. Contrasting with the hard, shiny plastickyness we come to expect from the originals, these styles enter into dialogue with one another, each one informing another, forcing the viewer to take note of different qualities of the objects with each depiction.
Pasveer reminds us that, in this world of constant bombardment of stimulation and over-exposure to information, there is something important about stopping to notice the small things, detaching things from their meaning and looking at the object as an aesthetic thing, removing it from its function, playing with its form, until it becomes almost unrecognisable.
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