Maaike Schoorel: Residency - Woning Van Wassenhove, MDD
Past exhibition
Overview
Maaike Schoorel at House Van Wassenhove Maaike Schoorel’s work is informed by her research into the human mind’s ability to perceive and understand the visual world. The subjects of her paintings seem at once recognisable and elusive. Using photographic source material of people, places and objects, her compositions simultaneously appear on and dissolve into the canvas. In the House Van Wassenhove, her new paintings are placed in situ. The paintings are based on daily images we are all familiar with; a selfie on a sofa or in a bathtub, a waterglas or plants in the garden. The works are in dialogue with the brutalist architecture of the building. The house is designed by the architect Juliaan Lampens and built between 1972 and 1974. The structure is made with concrete, wood and glass, where all living areas overlap: no separate rooms, but one open space. The warmth of the wood and ever changing play of incident light shatter the massiveness of the concrete. Basic geometric shapes structure the interior: the sleeping area is a circle, the kitchen a triangle and the office space a square. But similar to Schoorel’s work, the house is not just a game of shapes and lines as it redefines our experience and expectations of living. Her paintings have paradoxical formal qualities. At fist glance, they seem to be the result of a process of the progressive erosion of an initial image. But if we give Schoorel’s paintings all the time they need, things slowly start to reveal themselves in a different way. Her images -only seemingly ‘residual’ - no longer come across as what is left after an almost-finished erasure, but as the outcome of a permanence that persist despite everything. During her residency she will be preparing and reflecting on new works based on the interior of the House van Wassenhove. These paintings will be included in the painting biënnale on the 28th June at the museum Dhondt Dhaenens. She will also continue to work on her book that she is publishing with Hannibal Publishing, Belgium and co published by Kunstverein Amsterdam. The book launch will coincide with the painting biënnale at MDD in June this year.
Installation Views
