Bert Schutter's video project, Les Baigneuses, bathing girls, refers to a famous painting of the same title by the French impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir. In Renoir's large nineteenth-century painting, which can be found at the Museum of Art in Philadelphia, two naked girls can be seen sitting by the waterside in idyllic surroundings, while three more girls are bathing in the water. Renoir, in turn, based this 'piquant' representation on an eighteenth-century relief.

This art-historical background makes you wonder what you are going to see, what Les Baigneuses anno 1996 will represent. Your curiosity is kindled and your desire to retrieve and verify the image is aroused. Once you enter the room, you are welcomed by sounds, of splashing water, laughing voices. Encouraged by the title, your imagination is stirred and you can already envisage naked girls, splashing and giggling... You want to know precisely what they look like, and you proceed in the direction of the sounds. You are led through a labyrinthine area - perhaps a contemporary interpretation of the nineteenth-century maze, which, in gardens and parks, was the site for frivolous and titillating games - to a screen, onto which the scene will, no doubt, be projected...

When you have almost come near enough to capture the image, you suddenly hear a scream and the sound of wildly troubled water. Once you have reached the image, the women appear to have disappeared. You only see rippling water, while in the background you hear the sound of women running away. Your desire is unfulfilled, and has only been intensified by the disillusion of the absent image. After lingering around hopefully for a while - who knows, the girls might still come back to show themselves to you - there is nothing left to do but to leave the room.

And then, when the space around the screen is empty again, when you have gone, a woman reappears hesitantly, and, after she has convinced herself that there are really no more Peeping Toms around, she beckons to her friends. Elatedly, they run into the water again. Their voices and sounds ring out... At least, that is the rumour, whether it is true or not will never be known. Certainly, you can go back, but the bathers will hear you coming and will flee. You will always be too late: time and reality are in conflict in this paradoxical event, which cannot be watched and cannot be experienced.

In the full-cycle performance of Les Baigneuses, the illusion, evanescence and elusiveness of the image stare you in the face. To pursue it is useless, and the only thing that survives is your yearning, the temptation and the promise, in this case, of beauty, nudity. Almost like Narcissus, you would be tempted to run into the water, to chase the image...

Jorinde Seijdel