MARCEL VAN ETTEN

1970 born in Laren, the Netherlands

The most important part of his art is the working process.
He starts his paintings and drawings without an image, but the moving hand shows a comic gesture. In the signs on the canvas he recognizes the worlds and entities he wants to work with. And in what is left on the canvas he finds the painterly question. Every painting is an investigation, the painting is investigating painting. In his works appear reactions on other paintings you can find in the history of art.
He likes to see a painting as a group of image elements. Therefore he doesn’t make any distinction between the abstract or the figurative. In his mind he brings the abstract and the figurative back to image-grammar. This means rhythm, color, composition, line etc. The spectator is confronted with a wide variety of world combinations.
An abstract part in one painting can be a figurative part in the next painting.
He is not necessarily confined to one subject. A painting should be a process, and a solution on its own.

1994-1996     BA Painting Department, The Royal Art Academie The Hague
1990-1994     BA Drawing Teacher, Hogeschool van Amsterdam PROJECTS
 

EXHIBITIONS
2012     Duo exhibition, Central Academy of Fine Arts/ CAFA, Beijin
2012     Lecture, Central Academy of Fine Arts/ CAFA, Beijin ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
2009     Artist in Residence “ Culture and animism maatschapij , Mie, JP
2008     Artist in Residence “ Artseeding” Platform Tomo, Kyoto, JP
2000     Project “Outsiderart” with writer Carolina Trujillo, Motevideo, Uruguay
1998     Artist in residence “ Landscape and Technological leftovers ” Montevideo, Uruguay