Emo Verkerk’s (1955) portraits – now on show amongst other works in his retrospective exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum,
The Hague – are a bit made like listening to music. By listening to it, music becomes your
own thought or even a reflection of yourself. Listening to music can’t be anything else but an
appropriation of what you hear. You may recognize your ideas, feelings, emotions or even personal remembrances in
it. Music, when listening to it, becomes you, or you looking at you, or you looking to
the world around you. I gather that’s more or less how Verkerk makes his works. His paintings,
objects, sculptures and anything beyond or in between seem to be the products of listening. It is
not just a matter of associating things that makes up Verkerk’s work, it is taking portraits as
part of thinking. Persons become ideas or become remembrances. Birds play another role in his works. Like
the portraits, they are more or less recognizable. Recognizable as particular species, that is. But, although they
seem to have a function in the music, they are also outsiders, like messengers, a classical role
of birds. Well, anyway, go and take a look yourself. Emo Verkerk’s exhibition is a welcome
refuge from the crowded Rothko show on the second floor of the museum. I’d grant Rothko’s
works the intimacy and reflective stillness (but also the music!) of this wonderful Verkerk presentation.
[Click on the pictures to enlarge]
Bertus Pieters
