Elke Andreas Boon

The figurative artist Elke Andreas Boon, is the author of all kinds of formal works: photographs, drawings, videos and embroidery constitute the bedrock of her installations, in which various works react to one
another in silent confrontation. Across this plurality of media and techniques, a red thread of leitmotifs traverse all of Boon’s work. The scars of the photos recur in the series of drawings called Blood Flowers and in the embroideries of Rags and Bandages. Spots of red on the pale figures in the drawings suggesting wounds as well as, more frivolously, flowers on the skin or, as the case may be, dots on their knickers.
Boon’s pictures tend to be unmistakeable and yet, at the same time, they are always fundamentally oblique. The first impression given is one of beauty, yet this is deceptive and one should not overlook the further reality, evanescent but harsh, concealed behind their façade. She is typically on the lookout for the secret dimensions folded at the heart of a human’s life and relationships, wherein she attempts to penetrate both the creative and destructive aspects of each. This makes her a remote observer who confesses, nevertheless, a deep implication to society. She refuses universal interpretations of her work. The work of Boon is characterized by a profound duality pointing to man’s fragility and to his capacity for rebellion alike. A common factor linking these items could be identified as a continuing fascination with the inexhaustible energy which seems to animate her subjects, who, no matter how bruised by experience, keep on trying to make a new start. In this sense the scars that she is so keen to display paradoxically reveal, at times, an almost insane passion for life in all its dimensions.