Heat Wave, the third solo exhibition by Marilyn Sonneveld at the gallery. Through a vivid interplay of color and form, Sonneveld’s oil paintings and glass objects express intimate narratives that communicate universal notions around the body, touching upon (self)acceptance, vulnerability and sexuality. Last summer, the artist began painting with glass, focusing on herself and her own body for the first time. When the Sun Comes Up, a large scale glass installation exhibited at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, showed the transformative journey of Sonneveld’s own physicality in anticipation of impending motherhood. For Heat Wave, the artist takes it a step further and delves deeper inwards, revealing a shift towards abstraction.
In Heat Wave new oil paintings set a different mood as their colors amalgamate, abandoning the clear lines and strokes that characterised Sonneveld’s previous series. They convey a certain temperature, pressure and humidity, similar to weather maps. Behind these high pressure areas, we catch a glimpse of intimate scenes, reminiscent of vague memories. Only their traces and shadows are within our reach. The paintings alternate with new glass paintings and sculptures, partly transparant partly obscured. This duality is explored throughout Heat Wave, guided by an overwhelming presence that evokes a feeling of nostalgia.
“Heat Wave originated in Terschelling, visiting the island with my own young family brought back childhood memories of longing, warmth combined with melancholia and isolation. This translated into a new body of work that was really about painting emotions and feelings rather than scenes or bodies. In diving further inward and painting from memory, they show a new stage of abstraction.” (Marilyn Sonneveld).
Memory truly becomes faint, what is painted looses it dominance over how its painted, alluding to an emotional frequency of a blue but sheltered feeling; one of being alone in togetherness, of longing for safety, of protecting and being protected, of holding on, and of fear; fearing both loss and abandonment.
Photo’s by Neeltje de Vries
