Rachel Ruysch
Rechtstraat 59
In Rachel Ruysch (New Order) by Gordon Cheung, the carefully arranged flowers in the compositions of Dutch still life painter Rachel Ruysch dissolve into a digital vortex. Contours blur, colours bleed, and a meticulously painted natural scene becomes a dripping, distorted digital reality. The flowers hover between materiality and dissolution, historical tradition and technological disruption. During the late Dutch Golden Age, Ruysch used her botanical knowledge and refined painting technique to create opulent still lifes. Cheung deconstructs her work using an algorithmic “glitch” that transforms the brushstrokes into abstract, grainy pixels – the “digital sands of time”. In doing so, he disrupts the stability of the past. What remains is a fragmented memory of an image that once embodied artistic and scientific expertise.
Cheung’s video work is also a reflection on power and history. Ruysch painted her floral still lifes at the height of the Dutch Golden Age, just before the decline of the Dutch Republic. Her flowers symbolised the prosperity and fragility of this era. In Cheung’s work, past, future, memory, and dissolution converge to form a contemporary Vanitas in which time itself fades away.
Thanks to Gay Jongen.