It is our pleasure to invite you to Art Rotterdam, which this year takes place from 19- 22 May. In the Solo/Duo Section (stand number 17), we show a presentation of photographs by Lonneke van der Palen and paintings by Mirjam Vreeswijk. We hope to see you at the fair. Buy your tickets via artrotterdam.com
Lonneke van der Palen, Mornings, 2021, 60 x 45 cm, pigment print, edition of 5 | INA Ultra Star, 2021, 60 x 45 cm, pigment print, edition of 5.
Glamourizing the banal
The work of Lonneke van der Palen (NL, 1985) is a growing visual investigation in which one theme prevails: the aesthetic pleasures of everyday life. She reminds us of the fact that everything around us is shaped, by both nature and man. How all these things take shape and meaning in our lives on this planet and the actions that go with them is the breeding ground for her work.
Van der Palen wants to amaze the viewer. She looks at everything with the same interest. It makes no difference to her whether her subject is a rusty oil bottle in the dusty rocky landscapes of Croatia or a Margiela handbag in a Parisian studio, and whether she shoots with a professional camera or simply a phone. Her aim is to capture a moment and make the viewer look at the world with the same admiration and love.
In recent years, she has built up a large collection of photographs on subjects ranging from plastic chairs, tablecloths, stray shopping bags and jerry cans to stones, tent cloths, exotic fruits and boys in swimming trunks having cocktails. Instead of simply recording these everyday subjects, she literally puts them in a different light. This leads to a sometimes visible, sometimes invisible shift in reality. She enlarges subjects and reduces the image to a cleaned-up essence, which results in compositions in which shape, colour and light relate to each other in a well-considered way.
Mirjam Vreeswijk, Night Voyage, 2022, oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm | Serial Lover, 2022, 95 x 75 cm, oil on canvas
Layers of consciousness
The paintings of Mirjam Vreeswijk (NL, 1997) explore the different layers of consciousness. A painting is an optical illusion, an image that attempts to imitate something. Mirjam plays with this fact in her work. Different realities exist side by side. While looking, you become confused by a constant process of revealing and concealing and changing from the manageable to the improbable. In this way she reveals the different layers of meaning that run through the surface of the painting and the subject.
The work originates from collages of objects or images that appeal to her in one way or another. For example, shiny ribbons, designer shoes and pictures from books on decorative works from the 70s. From this archive of materials, she intuitively builds compositions, first in models, then on canvas. Step by step, Mirjam looks at what the image needs in order to eventually arrive at the perfect composition and perfect structures of paint.
This intuitive or subconscious approach gives the paintings a surrealistic feel that touches on elements of product photography, still life and landscape painting. In her latest series the fairy-tale world makes its entrance. This can be seen in ritual objects and in the approach to landscapes that some of the paintings provide a glimpse of.
