Biography
I have been photographing mannequins wherever I am in the world for a long time. The dolls stand before us as perfect, unapproachable images on which we mirror ourselves. Full of the spotlight and ambiguous; clair in obscure, real and unreal, dead and alive, man and woman and beautiful and ugly at the same time. If you look closely you can see imperfections: a loose eyelash, a displaced wig, smudged makeup or scratches on the skin. That makes them human and just as tragic as we sometimes are. That's why I started painting them.
My canvases show the personal drama of these archetypes, types who want to enchant, please and seduce us. This exhibition is a showcase with figures and characters, in which we see a reflection of ourselves. From you...from me.
Ies Noordhoek lives and works in Amsterdam. He trained at the Academy of Visual Arts in Rotterdam.
