Beloved by the likes of John Waters, the Dutch painter’s installations seem frivolous – but there are deep questions about art hidden beneath their candy-bright facades
Flowers blossom in bursts of cartoon euphoria throughout Lily van der Stokker’s new exhibition Thank You Darling. In one rectangular mural they repeat like absent-minded doodles in the margins of school notebooks. The word “THANKS” is painted in the mural’s corner in an apparently simple bit of gratitude for pretty colours and shapes. That work even comes with a real red sofa to kick back on, and a vase of flowers to smell. Could art seem more easygoing?
The Dutch artist’s candy-bright installations, where murals creep up walls and round corners in psychedelic curlicues, annotated with words and fragments of conversations or thoughts, have been amassing wide-ranging fans for three decades. An early bouquet graced a Viktor & Rolf T-shirt. John Waters, the cult director of “trash” cinema, is a vocal admirer. Van der Stokker’s public art projects include painting an entire building exterior pink for the 2000 World Fair in Hanover and creating a supersized chintzy teapot that sits atop a shopping centre in Utrecht. Yet for all the works’ popular appeal, tricky questions about art and everyday being lie beneath the sugar-coating of nursery pastels, bubblegum pinks and dazzling fluoros.
