Stringendo

People can crawl under your skin. The work of the Rotterdam artist Silvia B. – with people in the leading role – does exactly that: crawling under your skin. It asks questions about who we are, without judgment.

Silvia B. presents in Odapark a new series she has been working on in recent years. A wonderful cabinet of characters in a wide variety and at the same time in a mutual coherence as perhaps no other artist at present shows in the Netherlands.

The title – Stringendo – refers to the multiple layers of this series – and in fact her complete work. Stringendo from classical music stands for tightening. Like your body sometimes tightens in contact with others. Stringendo also says a lot about the artistic language of Silvia B.

She does not need shocking gestures to challenge us. A slight increase in intensity is enough in the art to bring us to the big questions of life. That is what she does, and that brings her very close to the motto of Odapark: ‘comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable.’

from press release Odapark, © Pascalle Mansvelders, Marijke Cieraad, 2017

The Protagonists