Refreshing return to the flesh

In my mind Keren Levi is one of the few artists in the Netherlands concerned with what one might call “The Authenticity of the Body;” a mode of thinking that is so fundamental that it incorporates the whole of the human experience. In her aesthetic, the body is brought back to a centred state of reality involving an organic unity, making it a vehicle for either coloured or neutral communication. For instance, in “Couple Like” she engages in an intricate and moving range of alternating proximities with her performance partner Ugo Dehaes.

Their bodies sometimes propel themselves against each other violently; at other times there are moments when the barriers of skin and bone are willed into non-existence so that an organic union can be achieved. In this piece, the body is the subject as the purely physical conditions of pressure, release, balance and kinaesthetics are exercised. The inflection, the colouring of the piece, occurs in our minds as we traverse the meanings of the idea of being a “couple.” A strange transference takes place here as we watch bodies move in space while our intellect shades their every action. Each audience member has a different story to tell, yet the ...