New installation and paintings

Marenka Gabeler

From 12-03-2011 Until 20-04-2011

MARIAN CRAMER PROJECTS is delighted to present MUSINGS, a series of new works by the Dutch, London-based artist, Marenka Gabeler. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, for which she has created a new large-scale installation to be shown alongside recent drawings, photographs and paintings.

Gabeler creates work for site-specific locations, searching for traces of a lost presence. She responds to the mood of surroundings by continuing a narrative that whispers through the walls. In this case the ‘leitmotif’ is the idea of the imaginary home. Using an early 18th century fireplace (discovered for sale in a London builders-yard), set within a section of panelling, Gabeler evokes a Spitalfields silk weaver’s house as a setting for paintings and drawings. This installation is superimposed into the space to imply an historical home within the gallery, which is itself created within a home.

Whether using drawing, painting, photographs or collage, Gabeler places individual pieces in relation to a space and in very specific relation to each other. She wants to connect the world depicted in the work to the wider world, to perceive it as a series of objects in a larger context. In forging a habitat for her work, Gabeler aims to give them a larger spectrum of identity through which they can come to life.

Memory and loss of memory are themes in Gabeler’s work. Inspired by the memories of her grandmother, who died last year aged 96, the work revolves around the fear of losing these memories. It also muses upon the methods by which memories can be retained and recalled.

Gabeler’s other grandmother is still alive, but suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. She is slowly losing her memory. Marenka tries to empathise with a state of being conscious of loss of memory and the unnerving process through which memories fade and identity is lost.

Painting faces that mask the canvas, she tries to discover that which is hidden from view or part of the unconscious mind. Ink drawings explore the tentative world between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, the tangible and the implied – all aspects of the art of memory. The figurative moves into the abstract leaving only a few, evocative, traces behind. All is a journey towards an art where the imagination completes the message implied by the drawn line, that creates a sense of longing for something that has been or might have been.

Marenka Gabeler (born in Delft in 1975) received an MA Painting with Distinction from the Royal College of Art, London in 2006. Her projects have taken her on residencies in Japan, Syria and Majorca. Exhibiting internationally, Gabeler’s work is held in high profile collections such as Alison Jacques Gallery and the Caldic Collection. Recent group exhibitions include Locus Solus at the Benaki Museum in Athens.

Private View
Saturday, 12 March 2011, from 4-7 pm

In the presence of the artist
13 March until 20 April, 2011

By appointment:
info@mariancramer.com
+31 (0)6 147 80 171

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