Marijke van Warmerdam
.
In the works of Marijke van Warmerdam anticipation is frequently present. She moves in a world of
dualism and is drawing attention for movements of one place to another, which creates a push or draw
in time. Each image looks very real and concrete. In both her film loops as well as in her photo
works. She speculates on obvious moments and mirrors places which are not there yet in real. In a
loose way of working she uses 'and'-'and' concepts instead of 'either'-'or'. Lately she prints photos
on mirror plate and paints on film stills printed on canvas.
Marijke van Warmerdam is internationally renowned for her short films, photographs and sculpture which
together form an extraordinary consistent body of work. With a typically light touch, the work combines
a deceptively naïve approach to the act of seeing with straightforward strategies such as dramatic shifts
of scale, doubling, reflection, rhythmic repetition or surprising juxtapositions to urge us to look with
our eyes wide open. In the course of two decades she has made a refreshing contribution to the phenomenon of looking.
Marijke van Warmerdam's participation at the Venice Biennual in 1995 put her on the international map. Her film loop 'Douche'
and also 'Sprong' caused with its lightness and subtle changes a great impact. Her endless repeating loops proved a condensed
observation of incidental easy recognisable events. That these film loops were shown in more than half daylight helped to intensify
the ambiguity of the ephemeral and the plainness of the subject.
Born in Holland in 1959, she has lived and worked in New York and Berlin, and is now based in Amsterdam and
Karlsruhe. Her work has featured in numerous important international exhibitions, including the Sydney, Berlin,
and Venice Biennials, and Documenta X. Recently, she had survey exhibitions at MAC in Marseille, Fruitmarket
in Edinburgh and IKON in Birmingham. In October 2011 a retrospective will be shown in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
in Rotterdam, which will travel to Museu de Serralves, Oporto in Portugal (2012) and the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf in Germany (2013).
