Multi-disciplinary artist, Marleen Sleeuwits has a keen eye for the disconcerting quality of seemingly mundane, everyday spaces. Central to her work is the examination of impersonal environments – places that could be at once everywhere and nowhere. Marleen’s artistic practice gradually evolved from photographing these spaces to intervening with them. She frequently reuses location-specific materials – such as panels from dropped ceilings, carpet tiles, fluorescent lighting tubes and glass wool – in her installations. She plays with perspectives, optical illusions and scale. In recent works, she has increasingly blurred the line between the 2D photo and spatial art, with the result of calling into question the visual aspect of reality.
‘In my work, I adjust the places I encounter. It started by making small changes in interiors, but they have become more and more extreme.’ She adds layers to spaces like office buildings or strips them in order to discover what surprises are hidden behind a wall or ceiling. In her current practice, Marleen Sleeuwits increasingly reuses the inherent characteristics of a location. By doing so, she questions notions of affordances, material, design, usability, and, most importantly, recognisability.
By scanning the artist’s work, looking for clues, you think you are getting a hold of the image – only to once again become completely lost in dizzying, repetitive inversions. Her art twists the visual element of reality, plays with scale, and creates optical illusions. Moreover, through her emergence from behind the camera into the field of practice, she alternatingly challenges the role of photographer, sculptor, architect, or painter.
• Recent exhibitions with Galerie Bart: Art Rotterdam 2024 • photo basel 2023 • Amsterdam Light Festival 2022 Big Art 2022 • Unseen Amsterdam 2022 • Connection 2022 • photo basel 2022 • Amongst Clashing Colours 2021 • Art Rotterdam 2021 • The Great Photography Special 2020 • Unseen Amsterdam 2019 • Big Art 2019 • Laying Bare 2019.
CV
Multidisciplinary photographer Marleen Sleeuwits, born in 1980 in Enschede, currently lives and works in The Hague. In 2001 she graduated from the Royal Academy of the Arts with a BA in photography, whereafter she obtained her MA in the same discipline at AKV|St. Joost in 2005.
Marleen Sleeuwits has been exhibiting solo and in group exhibitions, in The Netherlands and international. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions and art fairs such as: Royal Encounters, a group exhibition at Museum Escher in The Hague, Isomatrix, a solo exhibition at Kunsthal Rotterdam, QuickscanNL#02 group exhibition at The Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam and Colums, solo presentation at Big Art 2022, Bajeskwartier Amsterdam. Marleen has also been quite active internationally; she did several solo and group exhibitions at Sous les Etoiles Gallery in New York, US, had a solo presentation at photography fair A ppr oc he and did a commissioned installation at Le Molière in Paris. She also had a duo presentation at photo basel with Galerie Bart at Volkshaus Basel, Basel, CH. This is a small selection of where Marleen her work has been presented, check out Marleen her CV for more information.
Marleen’s oeuvre has been acknowledged through several awards, stipends, and nominations, such as the Meijburg Art Commission and Foam Talent, which Marleen both has won, a Prix the Rome nomination, and several grants by Mondriaan Fonds. Also, art collections of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, AkzoNobel, KPMG, Museum Het Valkhof, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and various private collections contain works by Sleeuwits.
Artworks
Press
2021 •
30.09 GalleryViewer BIG ART: meer dan 75 XL kunstinstallaties, monumentale kunstwerken en designobjecten by Flor Linckens.
26.01 ELLE Decor Italia I Pattern Di Marleen.
2020 •
01.08 Musée Magazine Woman Crush Wednesday: Marleen Sleeuwits editorial.
2019 •
09.09 Metropolis M Het zoete leven by Sanneke Huisman.
01.04 Frame Magazine Get the Picture? by Jane Szita.
21.03 Ignant Marleen Sleeuwits’ Distorts Everyday by Stephanie Wade.
01.05 WePresent Marleen Sleeuwits by Alix-Rose Cowie.
2018 •
07.12 Palet Magazine Marleen Sleeuwits maakt ruimte by Merel van den Nieuwenhof.
2017 •
01.02 PF Magazine Houvast en verwondering in vervreemding by Maurits Schmidt.
2016 •
21.01 On the Soft Edge of Space monograph by Marleen Sleeuwits, Onomatopee Eindhoven.
26.06 Prime Time, archetypes of abstraction in photography by Stefan Heyne, Galerie Diehl DE.
2015 •
01.06 Urbanautica Marleen Sleeuwits. Deforming Spaces by Nicolette Klerk.
21.04 Unseen Magazine Marleen Sleeuwits by Sophie Wright.
