Ruth van Beek & Roosmarijn Schoonewelle

Opening 21 April 2012, 4 - 6 PM 

Exhibition 21.04.2012 until 26.05.2012

In C3 Gallery Schoonewelle and Van Beek show new and existing work: a pillar, a podium, a table on which something is shown.  Hands slightly cherish a round shape: is it a hole.., a tunnel.., a ball, an egg, a planet or a potato?  All works bring the visitor into a strange world full of apparently cheerful multi-coloured collections.

Ruth van Beek (1977) collects old family photos, images from books, magazines, newspapers and leaflets. These are the last remnants of a disappearing phenomenon. The physical pictures that surrounded us for years give place to a flood of digital images on the Internet. Van Beek cut outs images that become a changing archive in which the photographs are always reordered. The pictures are taken from their original context and rearranged to highlight stories, which are hidden within the images. Pictures are combined, covered with painted paper, or parts are folded away. The new image is convincing but mysterious, an image of something that never existed before. As a result, new collections of assembled images originate that represent objects, but also become entities of their own.

Roosmarijn Schoonewelle (1980) combines drawings, collages and objects of paper and wood in versatile installations. In her work she explores and uses different visual languages and she is playing with a returning vocabulary. Like Van Beek Schoonewelle has a growing collection of images of undefined forms, mountains, tables and checkered floors. In her case it is a collection of personally drawn images, which she recycles. Her works are both narrative and abstract and are open for multiple interpretations. A range of moods is reflected in the intimate and fierce drawings. What fascinates Roosmarijn is the tension between the unpredictable wealth on earth and the awareness of the devastating effect that man has on the planet. The drawing itself is a quest for meaning.

The title, Dark Matter, refers to the dark substance of which 85 percent of the universe is made off. Matter, which currently cannot be expressed in particles. It refers to the unknown, to that which science has thrown no light on as yet.