Marlene Dumas

Topless Bars and Structural Skeletons

(it’s not a grid, it’s an irritation)

I don’t do straight lines. But I’ve come to realize that sporadically, over the
years, bar-like structures emerge every time I try to express intense feelings
of frustration regarding the limitations of art and life.

See what happens in All is Fair in Love and War [1]. Twenty years later
and here we go again: the politics of geometry versus the geography
of politics – figures caught in jail-like trappings.


[1] Dumas refers to the exhibition All is Fair in Love and War at Jack Tilton | Anna Kustera Gallery, New York, summer 2001


Topless Bars and Structural Skeletons. Selected fragments from Marlene Dumas, Nom de Personne/Name no Names, (cat.), Cabinet D’Art Graphique | Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001, p.34-37; and included in Marlene Dumas, Sweet Nothings. Notes and Texts, second edition (revised and expanded) Koenig Books London, 2014.