Atlantis and The Atlantis Blues
Atlantis is entirely about finding, not at all about searching. In this respect it is Picasso-like in the highest degree.
In this Atlantis is different from most contemporary art, in which artists are constantly searching for ways of expressing what they have to say.
No doubt, the discoverer of Atlantis, Marianne Schuit, has a lot to say. But it is not in the first place that she is looking for ways of saying it. What needs to be said is forcing itself into her expression, like some kind of mood is forcing itself onto our faces. We do feel how this mood is guiding our actions, but are hardly in control of how it expresses itself to our fellow-men.
The tricky part of Atlantis is where its seemingly boundless freedom of expression meets the very restricted way in which all its coloured pieces are neatly painted next to each other. It is here where determinism and free will seem to blend, in a most natural way, in a third possibility: the way of Atlantis.
In a very deep way Atlantis ‘visualizes’ what may be the paradox of paradoxes we human beings encounter constantly in our own minds: being the biological creatures we are, entirely dependent on physiological processes, even where our most precious mind is concerned, we experience ourselves still as totally free spirits, capable of shaping our lives at our own will.
Atlantis, a profound and at the same time most sparkling expression, marks this paradox of paradoxes as an exiting, high-spirited, colourful ‘happening’, all dynamics, all lust for life. Something in which it is hard to search for anytning steady, while at the same time it offers a multitude of phenomena to find.
And so Atlantis was bound to propel an art project that could only be propelled by a work of art like Atlantis. Because, no matter how much it offers, it will always ask just that little bit more of us, while we are trying to keep up with its lively understanding of what it means to be the most paradoxical being around.
And this is only the beginnings....
