Ellemieke Schoenmaker and Alex Jacobs are familiar names in the Rotterdam art world. Schoenmaker is a painter of beautiful, mystical landscapes and is part of the collective Kimberly Clark with Iris van Dongen and Josepha de Jong. Alex Jacobs makes installations, sculptures and paintings in which he regularly puts himself and art into perspective. For their collaboration, Schoenmaker and Jacobs borrowed the name of Villeroy & Boch, the chic glass and ceramics producer whose name unmistakably lends status to the cups and glasses for which it is famous. Social status, money and power are subjects that Villeroy & Boch often portray in their paintings.
In Desperate Ambition (2008) we see a woman hitchhiking. She is standing in front of a large landscape painting, as if that is the road she wants to take. It is unclear whether the fashionably dressed woman will ever get to travel, but it is clear where she wants to go: her hitchhike sign says ‘Basel’, the city where the largest and most important international art fair is held, and where the careers of artists are made and broken. On the painting Escaping Criticism (2009), we see the painting duo sneaking off to the back of the canvas like thieves in the night. It is precisely the back of the canvas that we see: although the artists are hiding, they know that the public ultimately determines the value of their work.
Villeroy & Boch compile their images through staging a situation, photographing it and then either adapting it or supplementing it with computer-generated images from the Internet. The painting is not a reflection but rather a reconsideration or appropriation of the resulting image. The works are large-size paintings in a realistic and sometimes photo-realistic style. Contemporary street furniture such as a rubbish bin and a telephone kiosk, trendy clothing and (aerosol) colours such as bright yellow, light orange and fresh green, give the painting a modern appearance. Recognizable objects flow out amorphously, paint becomes matter, and aerosol is used to conceal parts or create hip colour accents. And yet, behind the vivid use of colour; the free allusions to the domain of art; and the up tempo battle between form and content, hides a critical vision of the way in which mankind shapes its culture and makes use of it.