Miss Van

Catalogue

Miss Van
Acrylic on canvas
2007

ATAME : SOLO SHOW
24 NOV - 29 DEC 2007

Video from the show

The Miss Van phenomenon returns for a solo show, the biggest she has ever prepared, in the new Magda Danysz gallery space. It would make sense that an opening for an exhibition of the sexy, sloe-eyed, pretty girls packing some serious action and otherwise known as Miss Van's poupées ("dolls"), would be…swelteringly, sizzling, hot.

Miss Van earned her stripes on the streets of her native Toulouse - a city in Southwestern France that is home to a world-famous graffiti scene - where she set the standard for her peers and discovered an early affection for ruffling feathers. With their old-fashioned pin-up poses and exposed flesh, they seem destined to become objects of scrutiny, if not obsession, as all exquisitely mysterious women invariably are. Miss Van encountered a certain amount of political censorship in her early experience painting in her native Toulouse. She is careful to point out, though, that that criticism came from outside the graffiti scene, and that her freedom as an artist is central to her work: "I just want to express my fantasy."

Although nearly inhuman in their delicate transposition of a certain dangerous cuteness, it's impossible not to notice that her paintings bear more than a slight resemblance to Miss Van herself. She recognizes it and even admits to a phase of sometimes "dressing like my dolls".

An artist from a young age, Miss Van dedicated herself to art school and graffiti at the same time, and made no efforts to hide her love for street art from her professors. In the early 1990s, she began tagging and going around with friends. It was not long before she began to develop her trademark "sexy, erotic images that will disturb or seduce people on the street." She likes to explore the symbiotic relationship between artist and public space, especially the fact that she can deposit images freely into a fully engaged environment and thereby encourage a heightened level of interplay between the viewer and her work.

From soft provocation on the walls of our cities to the bewitching charm spilled on the walls of the gallery, Miss Van can only amaze the passer-by, the visitor, the spectator. Though today the difference is that with her ATAME solo show the artist is presenting a far more sensual, more intimist, a much more womanly aspect of herself. The famed urban artist, who has fans all over the world, has grown up … and her art with her.

Hair, and even more hair, are intertwined all over the necks of the goddess like the figures Miss Van paints. These get the surprised, almost stunned, looks laid on them. The looker is helpless facing so much intense beauty. Sometimes attached, sometimes praying, these characters Miss Van paints disconcert by the mystery they convey. The visitors even talk about "depth", "sensitivity", "achievement" of this new body of work.

ATAME is already presented as an important show in the artist's career. A show she spent a year working for and comes out accomplished and complete. The characters are now full of feelings, vibrant … alive.