02 june 2025, Flor Linckens
Erika Peucelle: slowing down with paint
In her first solo exhibition at Stigter Van Doesburg, Erika Peucelle shows how paint can be used to slow down. In 'Experience Everything', on view until 5 July, she translates seemingly small moments from daily life into still and resonant paintings. Faces caught in backlight, a fleeting glance out a car window, a body half-visible beneath crumpled bedding… The artist seems to capture images on the edge of a memory.
Erika Peucelle was born in Zagreb, Croatia in the year 2000. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2023, and her career has since gained momentum with a residency at Madé van Krimpen, a place in the 'Best of Graduates' exhibition at Galerie Ron Mandos, and receiving the prestigious Sluijters Prize. The jury praised her ability to distil something universal from seemingly mundane situations, allowing her paintings to transcend a photographic moment.
A painting by Peucelle often begins with a snapshot taken on a small digital camera or Polaroid. These are images of friends, passers-by, a view from a moving car, moments that might appear unremarkable at first glance. In her studio, she transforms these photographs into oil paintings. Peucelle shifts effortlessly between precision and sketch-like intuition, aiming to make the feeling of the moment palpable, always with an eye for form, light and rhythm. The result is often raw, arresting and charged with tension, partly due to her use of colour, shadow and a degree of abstraction. Disturbing elements appear regularly in her work too, such as a weapon or a body on a stretcher.
Among the works on view at Stigter Van Doesburg is "A boy in a garden", in which a boy’s face is almost swallowed by shadow, wrapped in a dreamlike haze of light and darkness. He rolls a cigarette, a small moment of stillness without distraction. "A boy in a car" also shows the profile of a young man caught in a fleeting moment. Because of the composition and the interplay between light, colour and shadow, the work almost resembles a classical painting. And what remains outside the frame seems just as tangible as that what is shown.
In "A girl in bed", we see a young woman lying on her stomach, surrounded by crumpled sheets and sketch-like contours that leave the image open and fragmented. An iPad plugged into its charger anchors the scene firmly in the present, yet a sense of unease creeps in, partly because of the cold tones and stark red accents. Seen through half-closed eyes, the figure begins to resemble a body lying among rubble, as if in a war zone. That sense is heightened by the absence of spatial context: aside from a few photo frames in the background, there are no visible walls, corners or windows. Is this a way of expressing her loneliness and isolation?
Peucelle draws inspiration for her practice from pop culture, travel, psychology, art history and the people around her. That personal aspect imbues her work with an emotional charge. The scenes she paints are not invented but remembered, at least in part. Her paintings hold a quiet restraint. What makes her work so distinctive is her ability to render the personal as something universal. Her paintings are like diary entries that not only document her own life but also capture the spirit of a digital generation: raised on screens and distraction, yet continuously longing for something real, for slowness, for connection. Peucelle never spells this out. She simply shows it.
