Nelleke Cloosterman (BE, 1996)
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Nelleke Cloosterman (°1996) lives and works in London, United Kingdom (UK).
Nelleke Cloosterman’s recent works are mainly composed of what she calls modern-day vanitas paintings. With added elements compared to her previous still life vocabulary and a wider colour palette, both reflecting life in the city, the paintings turn around the precepts of the classical genre. Although inscribed in this art tradition with reminders of life’s fragility, the works here exhibited are not meant to convey moralistic messages. The notions of faulty life goals and futility of earthly pleasures, typical of the historical Christian depictions, are more truly embraced in their ordinariness, a human experience as much as any other. Moreover, the artist aims to escape from the rigidity of proclaimed meanings and let the viewer find their own ways within this fragmentary collage-like realm, as does the wingless yet flying bird which is a major symbol in Cloosterman's practice that could be seen as a self-portrait.
The combination of familiar objects that are not likely to be seen together (beer, vases from the British museum, cats, etc.) set in an indeterminate spacetime borders a surrealist take on reality. In fact, it is but the paintings’ more visible layer. Through transparency, images of open portals and windows, as well as through bas reliefs of scratched drawings on the underlayer, one can catch a glimpse of this other world of gradients, bubbles, branches, and flowers. Whether metaphysical, spiritual, or utopic, this representation appears intertwined with that of the mundane. Seemingly, the series proposes less of a dialectic approach of opposing sides, and more of a concession to their part in human experience. Estranged from a devout religious upbringing, the artist’s wish for openness in meaning reinforces the understanding that, as a construct, it is subject to change. A single concept cannot account for life and the world.
