The exhibition shows major works from the summer of 2020 to the summer of 2022. Paintings painted as a result of an environmental offense behind the studio of Marc Mulders, on the Baest estate in the summer of 2020 and other attacks worldwide by humans on vulnerable nature, such as Hunt for Paradise, Dark Waters and The Four Horseman. In addition, there are the light paintings, which do not bear activist titles but nature names such as Garden Scene (Persian), A Garden Carpet, The walled Garden and Garden Fountain (Persian).
The new publication Marc Mulders will accompany the exhibition. Hunt for Paradise with an essay by Nanda Janssen from Paris [fa]. In addition, there are also T-shirts available with 'The Green Woman' and 'The Green Man'.
My paintings with pastel colors and orderly compositions got in the summer months
from 2020 visit from 'intruders'; dark exotics appeared among the soft colors. I sent for them, the Zeitgeist brought them into the studio.
I call them 'Intruders', just as I experienced the environmental crime of illegally dumped dirty land, behind my studio, in the woods on the Baest estate. This incident had a big impact on me as the forest adjacent to 'My own private Giverny' habitat was suddenly scratched. From this forest and the flower fields I draw all the inspiration to paint generous floral paintings (I protected it as a 'Green Man'; I went out weekly to clear the forest litter, reported drug waste dumping and excess spread of slurry and protested against the arrival of an approach route with even more particulate matter over the nature of the Baest estate and its natural cemetery).
Subsequently, these paintings were given the title Hunt for Paradise, which I wore, and more paintings followed with black, whimsical figures floating over pastel-colored fields: The Four Horseman and Dark Waters.
Marc Mulders 01.04.2022
The Hunt for Paradise series and canvases such as Dark Waters and The Four Horseman seem to take a different painting course. Here the strategy of the dissonance is followed. The background is made up of organic shapes in pastel colours, like floral auras, and the foreground consists of wildly painted pasty touches in black and other dark tones with strokes and paint splashes.
Even without knowing the reason for these paintings, the deposit of polluted soil on the protected estate where Marc Mulders lives, the contrast between the lovely lower layer and the threatening upper layer can be experienced. The fight between light and dark, good and evil, life and death are age-old themes. In my mind, the black spots transform into figures or even, combining Marc Mulders' Christian background with the title, into the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Or, associating with other personifications of evil, in the Nazgûl from Lord of the Rings and Darth Vader from Star Wars.
Nanda Janssen, from her essay Painting with the third eye
Additional information:
• Recent hebben Museum V00rlinden en De Pont Museum, een werk uit de serie Hunt for Paradise opgenomen in hun collecties
• Zie voor meer informatie over de oorsprong van de serie schilderijen Hunt for Paradise: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/08/05/ik-ben-druk-in-de-weer-als-klokkenluider-a4007946 https://depont.nl/collectie/kunstenaar/marc-mulders/hunt-for-paradise-hope-190920/info