Strik's book is a fluent stream of images and words in a strong connection to each other where the look inside and the outside happens simultaneously. The images continue within a long historic artistic line of visionary artists who probe the tresholds of human essence. Strik's intense, poetic practice explores the possibilities of metamorphosis and the process of (artistic) creation. In conversation with aspects from El Greco, Goya, Darwin, Freud, Munch, Ensor or Duchamp her approach is archaïc in a higly alert way. The viewer will be confronted with energetically-charged apparations transmuted into shapes, portraits and figures on paper, now fixed as definitive states of being. Constantly shifting between monumentality and intimacy, her figures are a visual stimulation that prompt the viewer to rethink the human condition today.
The book ties in the exhibition by Elly Strik in Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid and has over 250 color and 120 black and white images, three exclusive poems by Ben Okri , three essays by Bart Verschaffel, Beatriz Preciado, Carlos Gamerro and Victoria Noorthoorn, and a conversation between Elly Strik and art historian and writer Jean-Christophe Ammann.