Nelleke Cloosterman | Song of Invisible Boundaries

4 October - 8 November 2024

Indigo+Madder is pleased to present Song of Invisible Boundaries, London-based, Belgian artist Nelleke Cloosterman’s first solo exhibition in the UK.

Cloosterman’s work delves into the construction of meaning to interrogate belief systems and ideas of absolute truth. Her paintings introduce a diversity of positionalities and arguments, through a painting process that involves extensive layering, translucency of colour, textural variations and scraping. The compositions incorporate several influences and temporal variations, ranging from symbolic details developed from a re-interpretation of gendered art historical discourse around European vanitas; to found digital imagery imbued with glitches and flattened perspectives. In the process, the paintings become holders of multiple stances and ideas.

In the exhibition, which takes its title from a poem by Louise Glück, Cloosterman’s new series of paintings, consider transformation through themes of coming-of-age, utopian love, loss and inner conflict. Surreal juxtapositions, symbolic imagery and still lifes inhabit different, sometimes hidden layers of the new works, creating destabilising spaces that play with reality. In Song of invisible boundaries, three dancing female figures, emerge from different layers of the picture plane. Through extensive layering techniques and gradients, the work plays with flatness, illusion and three-dimensionality. For the composition, Cloosterman referenced found images from lingerie ads and as an act of subverting the male gaze, asked her sisters to stage those poses, turning stock images into moments of familial love, and then again to digital images and collages, from which she then painted the figures. Through this process, Cloosterman deconstructs context creation, thereby exposing the artifice in the production of the images, making us question the illusion and its aims. The process also slows down the act of consuming the images, and marked by shifts in time and positionality, complicates the notion of looking.

Similarly, the other works in the show use context and artifice as a device to play with authenticity, significance and ideas of love. Captivated, incorporates cat imagery, arranged as a traditional still life with decaying white tulips, a crystal glass, a letter, and a gentle colour gradient, visible through a window. A textured drawing, where flowers from all the seasons grow together, adds another layer of meaning and compresses time. The cat imagery and tulips embedded in the work hold symbolic values in various different cultural contexts but are encoded with new meanings here, to foster a feminist narrative and dwell on the dynamics of different societal expectations for men and women. Fading innocence with roses and crosses, plays with saccharine symbols of love as depicted in popular culture. Underlayers of gradients and bubbles emerge from beneath the crosses. While the works evolve from digital sketches, the painting process itself, introduces surprises, textures and new gestures into the work. In Cloosterman’s work, the sociocultural narrative is imbued with a highly personal examination of her own beliefs, lived experience and a desire for transformation. Having become estranged from a conservative, religious upbringing, her work proposes narratives whose structures include synchronisation and coexistence, rather than conflict, polarisation and incompatibility.

The new series introduces multiple standpoints, narratives and shifting positionality, along with a stance that invites collaborative meaning-making with the viewer.

Nelleke Cloosterman (b. 1996, Belgium) lives and works in London. Nelleke received her MFA and BFA from KASK Gent, Belgium in 2019 and 2018, respectively. Her work will be part of New Belgian Painting, which opens at S.M.A.K., the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent in March 2025. In 2021, she was selected for a residency at HISK in Gent, Belgium. Solo exhibitions include Song of invisible boundaries, Indigo+Madder, London; Dawn Goes Down to Day, PLUS-ONE Gallery, Antwerp in 2023 and Cardshark, CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels in 2022. Selected group exhibitions include Face Time, PLUS- ONE Gallery, Antwerp, 2023 Summer Show, Barbé Gallery, Knokke, 2023, Beyond Borders, Verduyn Gallery, Moregem, 2023 and Everybody Has a Plan Until, BARBÉ, Gent, 2022.

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