4. The Balcony, 2002-2008

A personage lounging in an easy chair overlooking the balcony; in perspective we see two feet in socks, possibly a hand and a pair of blue shoes on a colorfully decorated floor. The floor rises towards the horizon until it reaches an ill-defined planter filled with green leaves. The elements that inhabit the view beyond become less certain in depth, partly because of a semi-transparent curtain. A reclining female figure at rest floats in space over the balcony. She is enveloped from head to toe in tubes that are possibly monitoring her vital signs.

Only the head of the floating figure passes outside the pictorial setting and becomes encrusted into the right-hand panel. This appears to be a printed photograph showing a toilet bowl with a deposit of human excrement in the unlikely form of a capital A. The toilet and the evidence of activity have both been decoratively framed by faded lilies resembling the tired vegetation from the preceding balcony scene.

The toilet scene of an ever so pleasant situation as part of a morning toilet is framed like a grave; a Turd Funeral according the artist. Mrs. Smit, the artist’s mother, suffered from severe depression in the period after her last pregnancy, because she had worried about her youngest son’s health for nine months. He eventually arrived in the pink of health. The setting enumerates the highlights of her daily routine, where reality and imagination merged.