21 – 24 September 2023
Unseen 2023
During Unseen 2023 we present the artist Lonneke van der Palen (NL, 1985). Her work 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.
In her photographs the detail is the main subject. Close-ups of objects wandering around as litter in natural realms of our earth. We see accidentally created stunning moments, like a lost dark slide in the moorland and a jerry can of windscreen wiper fluid stuck in the mud. Or staged images created from the artist's imagination, such as a peach balancing on a car mirror and lipstick in a broken egg.
Her aim is to capture a moment and make the viewer look at the world with the same admiration and love. Her photographs show the ambiguity of human life on earth. It is our litter that damages the planet. But at the same time it gives a moment of joy, when we see a plastic bag beautifully caught in a stream of water. Nature, and that what destroys it, are for a moment intertwined in a loving embrace.
Lonneke van der Palen was nominated for the Meijburg Art Commission 2023, that will be awarded during Unseen.
Installation views
Artist
Lonneke van der Palen
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.
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