Sorry For The Damage

Marjolijn De Wit exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery
Marjolijn De Wit exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery
Marjolijn De Wit exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery
Marjolijn De Wit exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery
Marjolijn De Wit exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery
Marjolijn De Wit exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery

Asya Geisberg Gallery is pleased to present “Sorry for the Damage” by Marjolijn de Wit, an exhibition of oil paintings by the Netherlands-based artist. Exuberant and lush, the paintings are in a relatively small scale for the artist, whose oeuvre includes larger canvases and floor installations, as well as collage based works that are inspired by or incorporate ceramic pieces. In her third solo exhibition, De Wit hones in on the startling disconnect between the advertising and the editorial content of National Geographic magazines from the 1970’s and 80’s. Seen from the vantage point of our time, the articles and imagery that promote the wonders and diversity of the earth are negated by a lifestyle bent on our planet’s ruination. Extraction of gems, minerals, or fossil fuels, luxury underpinned by unseen carbon footprints; food delivered from every corner in every season at an environmental cost; these issues have grown more prominent today. Nonetheless, her paintings are not meant to hector. De Wit throws together isolated symbols with the seamlessness of deftly-handled oil paint, as she adamantly luxuriates in her medium. Her jewel-like paintings flutter their painterly eyelashes at us, coyly cooing into our psyches. Schematic compositions resist clear readings, as each opaque yet aesthetically jarring composition provokes the viewer to parse De Wit’s connections.

Each painting begins with a landscape background, romanticized and abstracted beyond easy recognition. Objects and fragments in the foreground leap in scale and reference point. In “Elegant and Exclusive”, gaudy gold watches intrude on the borders of a buttery multicolored moth. In “Rebalance”, a dolphin earring catches the corner of a canvas covered in rhythmic pine needles that themselves look like sinuous dangly earrings. A pink curlicue in “Strikingly, Excitingly, Destructively, or Mysteriously Different”- a gift-wrap scrap – suggests a bit of festivity, but when multiplied and abandoned festers into a pollutant. The backgrounds play out varying scenarios of nature: fading away and exhausted, carved mountains being mined, or a commercialized playland for humans who ignore their ravagings. De Wit uses techniques familiar from past work: mirroring, fragmentation, using a Neo Rauch-like shorthand for illustration and commercial photography, or making an image within an image – chocolates shaped like seashells or accessories as cheap pastiche.

Having immersed herself in the specific time frame of fifty years ago, De Wit recognizes the “plus ça change” aspect – we have gotten no closer to ameliorating our distraction amid the earth’s destruction. Similarly, while print has lost its shine over the last half century, the advertising and content oxymorons persist. De Wit has a knack for making even the familiar seem “off”, askew, or elusive. Layers merge, imagery beckons but plays hard to get. The cascade builds, and it’s clear the project will march onward, so that we might reconsider and slow down our march towards indifference and oblivion.

No Ruins No Ghosts

No Ruins, No Ghosts – Marjolijn de Wit

from Saturday 7 March till Saturday 11 April, 2020

Gerhard Hofland is proud to present No Ruins, No Ghosts, the first solo exhibition of Dutch artist Marjolijn de Wit (1979, Bennekom, NL) with the gallery. Having exhibited primarily abroad in recent years, No Ruins, No Ghosts marks De Wit’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands since 2016.

The works of Marjolijn de Wit appear like vivid puzzles asking to be solved. Often composed from a random mixture of various elements of flora and fauna such as leaves, birds, or flower petals, De Wit disturbs their hierarchy by adding human made objects, abstract painterly shapes, and playing with size, scale and composition that resembles the technique of collage.

Throughout the rich canvasses, every object and element together resembles the act of a (future) archaeology, challenging the spectator to speculate on the relationship between all parts of the paintings. Unrelated objects appear as debris of a story that has yet to take place, even if it is only in the mind of the spectator entirely. They are the rubble of our society, in which nature is ever so often disrupted by the human urge to control it, and of which De Wit’s works provide a frame for the spectator to constantly find new narratives.

Distinctive to the practice of De Wit is her use of contemporary signifiers; photographs, records, or pieces that resemble (torn) drawings continuously refer to forms of human creation and the existence of culture as oppositional to the wilderness of nature. Also in her techniques and use of painterly materials De Wit finds balance between aptly directed structures and the freedom of painting. Deliberately anti-aesthetic at times, she often works in a wet-on-wet technique that gives her work a true painterly atmosphere and that echoes the joy she finds in the act of making. What remains, in the end, for the spectator, is the continuously tantalising question of what the narrative of your history will read like, and the challenge to keep solving the puzzle of everything De Wit presents us in her vibrant paintings.

 

(Text by: Menno Vuister)

Other Parts Of The Scene

Italy. Milano. Otto zoo. 2019. MARJOLIJN DE WIT exhibition.
Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit
Italy. Milano. Otto zoo. 2019. MARJOLIJN DE WIT exhibition.

Photographs by Lica Vianello

Expo Chicago

marjolijn de wit

Expo Chicago 2018

marjolijn de wit

More Than Just Another, 2019, oil on canvas, 160 x 130 cm.

marjolijn de wit

Other Parts of the Scene, 2018, oil on canvas, 160 x 130 cm

marjolijn de wit

Matters, 2018, oil on canvas, 160 x 130 cm.

marjolijn de wit

Stone and Rubble, 2018, oil on canvas, 160 x 130 cm.

 

marjolijn de wit

Expo Chicago 2018

How Things Act

marjolijn de wit

How Things Act
(Photography by Etienne Frossard)

marjolijn de wit

marjolijn de wit

marjolijn de wit

marjolijn de wit

How Things Act, 2016, oil on canvas, 200 x 170 cm.

marjolijn de wit

Irrefutable, 2017, oil on canvas, 150 x 130 cm

marjolijn de wit

Shifting Shuffled, 2017, oil on canvas, 125 x 110 cm

NADA NY

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NADA NY, 2018, Asya Geisberg Gallery, with Angelina Gualdoni (paintings) and Marjolijn de Wit (ceramics). Phototgraphy by Etienne Frossard

marjolijn de wit

 

Bricks, Bones, Cuts & Stones

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Is that all there is..

“Is that all there is…. Is that all there is…. Then let’s keep dancing”, zong Peggy Lee in 1969 met haar sensuele stem. Dromen, diepe verlangens, grootse ervaringen: alles wordt ingehaald en als het ware geneutraliseerd door de tijd. Wat rest is de ontgoocheling: is that all there is? Then let’s break out the booze and have a ball!

Is that all there is? Het moment van ‘ontgoocheling’ is een moment van reflectie, een tussenmoment waarin nieuwe verbanden kunnen worden gecreëerd en andere energieën kunnen worden aangesproken.

Wafae Ahalouch en Marjolijn de Wit hebben het idee van dat tussenmoment als uitgangspunt ingezet voor hun gezamenlijke presentatie bij De Nederlandsche Bank. Die installatie oogt als een kijkdoos, een ruimtelijke collage waarin twee werelden bij elkaar worden gebracht. Met losse elementen bouwden ze aan een structuur die ruim baan biedt aan grilligheden en onverwachte vergezichten. Ahalouch en De Wit nodigen u graag uit in hun theater van het leven.

No Cover Image

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Groupshow in Arti Amsterdam, with Stephan Jäschke (DE), Laurent Proux (FR), Tillmann Terbuyken (DE), Marjolijn de Wit, Thijs Rhijnsburger, Arthur Stokvis, Bonno van Doorn.

De Beuk Erin

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

I Propose that we take a walk together

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

summershow

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Pots Are Not People

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Art by Marjolijn de Wit

Asya Geisberg Gallery is pleased to present “Pots Are Not People”, an exhibition of ceramic-photographic collage, painting, sculpture, and installation by Amsterdam-based Marjolijn de Wit. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. In “Pots Are Not People”, de Wit appropriates photo-based imagery in combination with raw, glazed, or photo-printed ceramic pieces to explore ideas of future archeology, the interpretation of history, and our relationship with nature and the built environment. De Wit’s ceramics evade specific clarification and instead hover between authentic remnants and evocative constructed objects. The artist inserts her counterfeit pieces onto encyclopedic images of vast landscapes, suggesting the subversion of history through archeological analysis.

The daylightshow

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Circa dit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

IMPULSE, Pulse NY

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Re Rotterdam 2013

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

EKWC

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Abstract Gardening

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

May Rundgang

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Rijksakademie open 2009

 

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Rijksakademie open 2008

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

The Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam is a working and meeting place for artists from all over the world. Fifty resident artists can work for one or two years on research, experiment, projects and production. In addition to extensive technical workshops, the facilities include a library, artists’ documentation and art collections. Once a year you get the opportunity to see the work of the artists in their studio.

Brabant Nu

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

Artwork by Marjolijn de Wit

This land is your land

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Uncommon ground

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit

Marjolijn de Wit