25 august 2025, Flor Linckens
Inner Landscapes at Galerie Helder: from starlight to cardboard maquettes
From 30 August, Galerie Helder in The Hague presents the exhibition 'Inner Landscapes', featuring work by Lisanne Hoogerwerf and Vincent van Gaalen. Both artists explore the landscape as a place where human presence has been diminished or is entirely absent. That way, space emerges for a different experience of nature and imagination.
With this exhibition Galerie Helder initiates a dialogue between two artists who, each in their own way, push the boundaries of photography: Hoogerwerf with a painterly eye that constructs spatially and Van Gaalen with a photographic gaze that surrenders to darkness. They both share a fascination for what becomes visible once humanity steps back. Their work demonstrates that landscapes are not merely geographical sites but also mental and emotional realms.
Lisanne Hoogerwerf was born in The Hague in 1987. She studied Painting at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and subsequently pursued Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University. Although she began her career as a painter, she later discovered photography and film: two disciplines in which her visions could find stronger expression. In her studio in The Hague, she builds miniature worlds from cardboard, wood, sand and paint. Within these carefully composed sets, the artist captures a play that shaped by light and colour. Once the image is recorded, the temporary construction disappears and returns to the intangible. The result is a series of dreamlike and melancholic images in which the human figure is consistently absent. Where one might find such emptiness unsettling, Hoogerwerf experiences some solace and stillness in that. Her works expose the fragile relations between humanity, nature and culture without spelling them out. She regards the earth not as something to be controlled or rescued by humans, but as an autonomous entity that long preceded us and will definitely outlast us. This perspective lends her work not only a poetic quality but also a confronting relevance: it raises questions about the possibility of a world without us. Her photographs are held in the collections of the LAM Museum and the Aegon Art Collection.
Vincent van Gaalen saw the light in Delft in 1984 and studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Unlike Hoogerwerf, he seeks the landscape outside the studio, in the nocturnal nature of Europe. In his ongoing series "Absence" (2020–), Van Gaalen examines how nature reveals itself in the absence of humankind. Armed with a tent, a camera and a considerable amount of patience, he travels to the few places that remain dark on Europe’s light pollution map. There he waits until the moon and stars gradually unveil the landscape. His photographs capture trees, rocks and rivers glowing in faint light, evoking an experience that feels both unsettling and sublime. It is a practice that demands surrender: where the day is ruled by reason, the night asks for intuition and submission. For Van Gaalen, this is not necessarily a comforting experience, but an essential one that reminds us that humanity is not the centre of existence. His work has been recognised with the BBA Berlin Photography Prize (2022) and the Eye on Nature Award.
GalleryViewer editor Wouter van den Eijkel previously visited the studios of both artists. Read the interviews with Lisanne Hoogerwerf and Vincent van Gaalen here.
