Marilou van Lierop paints an elusive, disorienting, and slightly surreal world. Recognizable yet unfathomable. Through her painting, she explores social and existential phenomena, depicting the chaos and man’s helpless ways to grasp it. Our eyes shift back and forth, finding no rest. Van Lierop does not guide our gaze; she does not impose.
The whole and its parts, the fragments and their supposed connections—this motif recurs throughout Marilou van Lierop's oeuvre and appears in many of her works. She appeals to our persistent tendency to generate coherent narratives from independent fragments amidst the inescapable chaos—a chaos, the eternal state of what surrounds us.
In the solo exhibition ".....to Imparadise.....," Marilou van Lierop combines her signature techniques with innovative media, adding new dimensions and layers of ambiguity to her work. Her paintings depict a range of subjects, including landscapes, seas, clouds, rocks, complex shapes, animals, and human figures.
The support of her paintings is often not neutral. Her work on convex surfaces (elements from climbing walls; artificial reconstructions of mountain walls) presents diffuse images that balance between abstraction and representation. With delicate brushstrokes and transparent layers, she creates intricate, layered compositions without a center or focus. The hidden structures and patterns, which can only be understood sideways, are actually responsible for a layered, somewhat chaotic yet nonetheless fluid complexity.
Not only the elements from climbing walls but also the fake world of "inflatables" permeates her work—not only as a subject but also as a support. For instance, a giant painted "water walking ball" serves as a canvas. On top of images from Disney's "Frozen," we see depictions of, among other things, a large group of inflatable sex dolls, in a scene reminiscent of medieval representations of hell. This contrasts with the light, transparent inflatables, which always carry a reference to an artificial, cheerful, and superficial world.
Van Lierop's studies of individuals often feature hybrid figures, both human and animal, infused with iconographic references. These works invite exploration of questions about identity and symbolism. She plays with the interaction between these ambiguous figures and their artificial environments, rewriting unspoken narratives and leaving ample room for a mysterious, emotionally charged atmosphere. Sometimes, there are references to history and the past, or to what remains of it in our memory—this in contrast with current pseudo-worlds. Virtual worlds filled with contemporary scenes. These parallel, artificial, and conflicting worlds are brought together into one.
Artists: Marilou van Lierop
