Marjolijn van der Meij, Roland Versloot

work on paper, paintings

22 February – 22 March 2015

Marjolijn van der Meij (1970) draws landscapes in which she places people originating from a different context. In doing so, she questions their mutual relationships and their connection to their surroundings. Recently, she took a new step in the development of her work when she folded and creased a large charcoal drawing of a waterfall to realize a three-dimensional effect.

Subsequently she started applying this method to photographs of movie stars, album covers with rock artists and postcards with buildings and landscapes; items she has been collecting for years. By creasing the images, they are distorted, but are also given a new intensity and focus. At the same time this causes a sense of disorientation, forcing us to reconsider our relationship with our everyday surroundings, society and the memories and associations evoked by the photographs.

Ronald Versloot (1965) also interferes with the image by painting new depictions on top of old works. In the work Slide the contours of a woman sitting are, like a ghostly apparition, still visible in the new work. At the edges the earlier painting still remains intact, making it appear as if the new depiction is projected on it like a slide.

With this, Versloot demonstrates that all realities can be ignored or rewritten. This ambiguity is enforced by the lino-cut characters that are printed on the painted image like actors on a stage, making us question what is ‘real’: the printed characters or their painted surroundings?