08 april 2022, Flor Linckens
Elevated and mysterious images of ordinary people
Until 24 April, GoMulan Gallery in Amsterdam has programmed a duo exhibition with work by Merel Jansen and Dion Rosina. In their work, both artists highlight ordinary, everyday people, who are given a certain magnificence by the way they are captured.
Dion Rosina, Do we really want to know about the future #1, 2022, GoMulan Gallery
Dion Rosina only graduated from the Breitner Academy in Amsterdam in 2021, but his career is booming. His work was shown in the exhibition 'Here. Black in Rembrandt's time' at Museum het Rembrandthuis, in Framer Framed and at OSCAM, in a group exhibition by Patta curators Violette Esmeralda (head of photography) and Lee Stuart (brand director). The exhibition in Museum het Rembrandthuis showed that, contrary to popular belief, Black people were a part of Dutch society in the seventeenth century. Yet they have remained underexposed in (art) history and if they were depicted at all, they usually had little power and agency. Rosina is interested in the African diaspora and historical and contemporary representation. In his work, he expresses this in his own unique way. For his work, the Amsterdam-based artist makes extensive use of existing visual material, that he imbues with his own imagination. His paintings, which refer to collage, often contain a combination of figuration and abstraction and refer to real faces. People on the street, on the internet, faces from advertisements or historical photos from archives. Rosina came across a series of remarkable photos that were taken in Brazil around 1870. The artist is particularly interested in photographs with a certain charge and an indefinable context, a penetrating look or an interesting atmosphere. He then provides these photos with a new context, especially when he makes combinations of faces. He uses the photos as a starting point for a realistically painted portrait and the result is always a bit puzzling and enigmatic. As a viewer, you are curious about the story behind these interesting faces and you're invited to bring your own interpretation.
Merel Jansen, Up, 2022, GoMulan Gallery
Merel Jansen studied Product Design and Fine Art Painting at ArtEZ/AKI as well as Textile Design at the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. Her earlier works are characterised by a combination of these media, in which she worked her canvas with a sewing machine, that she effectively used as a pencil. These works were shown in Museum Nairac in Barneveld in 2019-2020. In the same period, the artist was nominated for the Dutch Portrait Prize and in 2020, her work was presented in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Now, the artists mainly works with oil paint, in paintings that, like Rosina's work, refer to a certain abstraction. Jansen seems to have a soft spot for people who tend to be invisible in our society: cleaners, undocumented migrants or people who do not fully meet the prevailing beauty standards. She then depicts these people in a vulnerable but exalted way, as icons or stately historical portraits, inspired by classical altarpieces. She is always looking for a certain purity that isn't posed.
