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On Saturday and Sunday evenings, the 19th and 20th of March at 7.30 pm, Matt's Gallery will become the venue of a performance by Nan Hoover, an American artist who has made Amsterdam her home since 1969. The work is entitled Intercept The Rays; after each performance she will also be screening two new video works, thus this will be London's first opportunity to view the relation between two aspects of an artist's work which has already achieved a considerable reputation abroad.

Nan Hoover’s chosen medium is light. Her performances centre on her own body as it moves within a projected, imaginary 'landscape' defined by rays and arcs of coloured light, gently coaxing and disturbing its outlines, subtly playing with its ephemeral surfaces, to the degree that the light and her body become one integrated force, a seemingly independent object offered up to refresh our (tired) senses. Her art is based on her personal delight in and attraction to light, not as a phenomenon to be isolated (i.e. Flavin, Kowalski) but for the way light filters over our natural world, giving up its objects, defining its spaces, in a continuously rich and variable way - her manipulation of light pays homage to 'nature in its manner of operation' (J. Cage) and metaphorically sees in its physical nuances our own private search for more intimate relations with the world we inhabit. This work is quiet and delicate, peaceful and assured, as it patiently radicalises our own sense of focus, detracting our aggressive egos, temporarily resting our eyes on things as they are - at least this is the message of her art, and it is one which deserves to be listened to.

Nan Hoover was born in New York in 1939 and studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. She worked in New York before moving to Europe, where she eventually became a Dutch citizen. Her work has been exhibited by, among others, The Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Neue Galerie (Aachen), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Musee d'art Contemporain (Montreal).

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