Marjolein Rothman: INTERVAL
Museum Villa Mondriaan is the museum for coming-of-age. The world-famous Piet Mondriaan developed during his teenage years in this villa in Winterswijk. Besides masterpieces by the young Mondriaan, the museum displays works by both established and contemporary artists in their search for their own signature. The artists have one thing in common: like the young Mondriaan, they are all in the turbulent period of their development.
Marjolein Rothman (1974) spent her childhood in Eibergen, until she moved to Doorn at the age of six. The scenic landscape resonates in her paintings composed of planes. Like Mondrian, she went through a process from figuration to abstraction, drawing inspiration from nature. A photo of her mother in a forest near Winterswijk formed the starting point for Rothman’s series of flowers and plants after her death in 2015.
Inspired by modernism, the tension between figuration and abstraction is an important starting point in Rothman’s work. Her representations are rendered with minimal depth in a sober palette, often just two colours. Rothman works in series, within which she allows colour and composition to shift. With fleeting touches of paint, unreal colours and low contrasts, her work balances on the edge of recognisability. Rothman’s material choice of oil paint on aluminium sheets means that the representations are constantly reflected differently depending on the incidence of light. In doing so, she shows how the meaning of an image is constantly in flux.
Villa Mondriaan’s first solo museum exhibition features Rothman’s work from 2016 to the present. Especially for the exhibition, Rothman has produced a new series of works in which she further challenges our perception.
Marjolein Rothman completed a fine arts degree at the A.K.I. in Enschede and studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She received the Royal Prize for Free Painting in 2004 and the Buning Brongers Prizes in 2004. She exhibited among others at De Kunsthal, Rotterdam, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Stadsgalerij Heerlen, De Nederlandsche Bank, Motive Gallery and Albada Jelgersma Gallery, Amsterdam. Abroad, her works were shown at the Fiac Paris, ARCO Madrid, Art Cologne and Art Miami.
