1 November 2012. ‘A skinrock of water,’ an in-depth review by Piet Gerbandy of Rozalie Hirs’ gestamelde werken has just appeared in De Groene Amsterdammer.
Piet Gerbrandy: “When looking at an impressionistic painting from a certain distance, one undergoes an explosion of color which still can be interpreted as a representation of reality. The painter employs a kind of fragmentation in order to create the impression of a larger whole. When you observe the canvas up close, you only see little dots, loose elements of which you scarcely can imagine that they may belong to a coherent unity. It is strangely paradoxical that so much technique is required in order to approach nature.
Rozalie Hirs (1965), also a prolific composer with a background in chemical engineering, is a poet who likes to reveal how her work comes about. Instead of merging splinters into a natural whole, she breaks unities down to sparkling shards. What remains is often a kind of stuttering, yet not that of a desperate poet who is not able to word the unsayable. Hirs rather tries joyfully and cheerfully to factorize the sayable. Her poetry is thoroughly contructed, while her starting point often is an experience of the senses, reminding of the early Dutch poet Herman Gorter. She writes sensitive verses that ideosyncatically strive for a balance between romanticism and mathematics.”