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Image of A beam too long to be photographed

Ger Van Elk

Dutch
(1941–2014)

A beam too long to be photographed
1972

Photograph on fabric
6 x 40 in. (15.24 x 101.6 cm)
Gift of the Kathryn C. Wanlass Foundation
2009.101

Between 1959 and 1988 Dutch artist Ger Van Elk spent a significant amount of time in the United States, frequently visiting Los Angeles, where his father worked as an animator. Fellow artist Bas Jan Ader introduced him to L.A. conceptualists like Allen Ruppersberg, John Baldessari, and William Leavitt. Van Elk became an early bridge between the conceptual art movement in Europe and the playful American version emerging in Los Angeles.

Van Elk produced a remarkably wide-ranging body of work, including sculpture, film, photographic constructions, and installations. His art was defined more by its thematic threads than by medium. Among his central concerns was the nature of truth as conveyed in images. The Dutch tradition of impeccably painted still lifes raised questions for Van Elk about the relationship between art and reality. He believed that representation is always subjective, perhaps intentionally deceptive, and inherently untrustworthy. The use of photography posed further questions of authenticity. As in this piece, his work often celebrates artificiality and provokes inquiry into the character of artistic presentation. Van Elk prodded his viewers to question him as the author of their experience and in so doing come closer to the truth about art.

A Beam Too Long to Be Photographed is a quintessential Van Elk work. The wooden beam is photographed in the woods, highlighting the difference between the “natural” trees and the “artificiality” of the milled board. Since it is “too long to be photographed,” the artist has broken the board, as one would a branch, and photographed the two pieces, together but separate. What is art capable of representing? What is the nature of Nature? There are more questions than answers in this image, and that is the experience Van Elk’s work frequently provides.

Claire Copley

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