How complex is the core of life, how complex its representation? In her paper works Belgian artist llse Pierard ( Vilvoorde, ° 1976, Sint-Lucas School of Arts, Brussels) focusses on the abstracted form of a cell, the basic and the smallest unit of life. The intriguing paper collages in their reduced oval shape are an ode to the cell, this overwhelmingly powerful organic construct. The treasures inside Ilse’s cells represent the complex capacities of biological cells:

the stupefying ability for self-reproduction and regeneration, the storing of information and maybe even memory, the capability to absorb and emit selectively molecules, to obtain and produce energy – all these stunning powers are inherent in each of the 50 trillion cells in our body.

How to represent all this complexity and the truth within artistically? How to transport the positive bearing and beauty of the cell as core of life?

The artist’s concern is to represent the timeless aesthetic harmony and beauty of an existential truth with a simple yet intense distillate of her own artistic material and language...

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Besides being a familiar, inexpensive every day material, the used paper Ilse chooses, all have different material characteristics such as surface textures, different grades of stiffness and transparency. The variable treatments of the paper or adapt to its nature or on the contrary brings it to its limits:

Ilse tears, cuts, pierces, crumples, wrinkles the paper into creases and flattens it again, then adhering layer over layer of oval shaped paper sheets into poetically equated paper compositions hiding and at the same time revealing its inside.

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Text by Dr. des. Nana Kintz, art historian and curator.