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The haiku never describes; its art is counter descriptive, as each state of the thing is immediately, stubbornly, victoriously converted into a fragile essence of appearance – It's that, it's thus say the haiku, it's so. Or better still: So! Here meaning is only a flash, a slash of light.
R. Barthes, Empire of Signs, 1970
Jelle Van Den Berg's Nature Morte series of still lifes in watercolour aspire towards a type of purity that is anomalous to Western modes of representation. The closest analogy to the delicate clarity of Van Den Berg's watercolours is the Japanese haiku.
Like visual haiku Van Den Berg's work apparently gives significance to humble objects by simply stating, 'it is So'. In so saying, nonetheless, a comment is made as to the acquisitive, narcissistic character of Western artistic traditions. Significantly, this critique is relegated to the margins of the exhibition, in the title of the catalogue essay Dead History/Nature Morte, and in two works, Museum and Television. The larger body of works, such as Avocados, Hairpin and Quince or Still Life however, cannot be read for such messages, for the effect of Van Den Berg's work relies precisely upon its lack of concern with symbolic agendas or visual commentary.
In keeping with the genre of modernist still life, Van Den Berg takes on everyday objects and biological specimens such as shells, flowers , fruit, hairpins and so forth. But these are not used to symbolize some greater meaning, prior existence nor are they rendered as expressive of the artist's inner subjectivity.
These objects are all appearance, they are offered to us as the unclassifiable traces of a loaded