Michal

Electrography in liquid glos,83 x 60 cm

Lieve Prins (1948, Belgium) began studying interior design at the age of 16 and completed the Academy of Fine Arts in Breda (Holland). Later, she moved to Amsterdam to study audio and visual communication at the Film Academy, where she became involved in the anti-art theories and ‘happenings’ of the early 1970s. Her book Touch charts Prins’ career from when she found her medium in 1981, inspired by a chance observation of a child’s hand on a photocopier. Soon after, leading a self-portrait project at her daughter’s school, she one day trooped the class down to a local department store with a pocket full of change, and lifted them onto the black and white copy machine and copied away – while two pupils kept watch. She was immediately smitten by the textures and patterns that came out, as well as the ‘magical immediacy – no waiting for negatives – about the copier.  This allowed her to learn from her mistakes in a tight action-reaction loop that she found exciting.

A year later she was invited with a number of Amsterdam artists to experiment with Canon’s new colour copiers that could print on A3 paper. So came the first of many trips out to Canon headquarters at Schiphol and a corporate-artistic symbiosis that continues to this day. Her subject matter down the years has been primarily the domestic: family, love, personal objects, powdered paints, market-bought seafood, plastic sheets. Throughout, there was a richly organic, very physical presentation of her themes.