Inge van der Ven (Delft,1973) studied Painting and Drawing at the Rietveld Academy.
She lives and works between Amsterdam (NL) and Arles (FR).

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« L’intimité, ce qu’il y a de plus intérieur et de plus caché devient surface ».
Jean-Luc Nancy

« Ce qu’il y a de plus profond dans l’homme, c’est la peau ».
Paul Valéry

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My work is intuitive, personal and resonates intimacy, fragility and feminity.  It explores the relationship between interior and exterior and is relating to the concept of skin and its different meanings like protection, interface between inside and outside, tactility, sensation, connection…Skin is a container, another key word in my approach. I see bodies as houses and houses as bodies (a second skin), they are symbiotically related.

In my work there is on the one hand, the use of these recursive sites of bodies and matter like beds, chairs, sofas, houses, bathtubs, tents, carpets, shoes, bottles, glasses, cups, bowls, vases… All receptacles, containers which diffuse the idea of a reception, a shelter, a welcoming, a cocoon, a nests, of any type of maternal womb.

And then there are also the membranes in my work that envelop bodies and materials – diverse skins, as it were: fabrics, clothes, tights, cloths, rags, wallpaper, newspapers, felt, wool… These membranes that form a cover which suggests the idea of clothing, of protection, of a sheath, of fur, of wrapping, a second skin.

From my daily (home) environment I collect abandoned objects and discarded materials that resonate with my theme of skin and container. But I pick up things as well simply because of the beauty of their imperfection. I find, select, and incorporate them, into my multidisciplinary work.

Everyday materials are being used in my paintings, drawings, sculptures, assemblages. Old objects get a second life turned into another material in the form of a sculpture or a wall installation. A big pillow of cleaning cloth, a camisole of teabags, an underwear of eggshells, a crochet collar of porcelain.

The concept of time and memory. is another important theme in my work. The serie Artefacts, little assemblages of collected materials and objects, visit this import topic. These poor materials and daily objects become become part of a world in which objects also have their own life, an autonomous existence, a soul. They become little relics of daily life.  Other works turn around the same subject as well, For instance the tent of stockings. All the collected materials and objects I use for my work carry traces of time; by their own past, by their use, by their decay. They are carriers of a memories, carriers of still time, suspended time. 
 

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