Christopher Artwork

femmeBRUT encompasses much more than just the title of an exhibition. It is not only a personal mission statement but also the flag for her search for female identity and female visual language in contemporary visual art. It is also the link to the gender discussion, an examination of visual language and roles in art as assigned to women and to men. With this insight, many puzzle pieces from her long career as an artist fell into place. Not all of her work falls under the ‘femmeBRUT’ heading, but many of her questions about the origin and future of her subject matter, about the role of women in society and in the visual arts finally find an answer in ‘femmeBRUT’. Is it possible to define ‘femmeBRUT’? Tricky. It is primarily a benchmark for her creative input and output. Now that there is fortunately more attention for textile art and art made by women, Van Putten feels all the more the need to give it her own vision. She searches for the limits of materials and uses both media alternately coarsely and refined by painting with a fine brush or broom, sewing on small sequins or using large stitches to attach ragged pieces of cloth in props to the canvas. The large canvases were partially made using the longarm machine, a special sewing machine 3 meters wide. This also allowed Van Putten to “paint with textile” in the middle of the canvas and draw with the sewing machine. For Van Putten, this monumentality is an essential part of the “femmeBRUT” philosophy. She is averse to the fiddling so often seen as typically feminine and working on small formats. ‘femmeBRUT’ stands for large(ish), imposing work that creates inevitable stopping power and demands attention. Boys & girls names The works are given boys and girls names. When you start to know the work after having them in your surrounding, you get to connect to the name, like meeting a new person.