AMSTERDAM.- Annet Gelink Gallery is presenting Awoiska van der Molen’s (Groningen, 1972) first solo show at the gallery.

There is a certain amount of silence in Awoiska van der Molen’s large-scale silver gelatin photographs. The silence of an image that, able to escape this age’s ongoing fast stream of images, stands still. Without any references to a specific time and location, Van der Molen’s sceneries reach a level of abstraction that goes beyond the photographed subject: it looks for the “unspoilt core” of things, as the artist says herself.

Working with analogue photography, Van der Molen is experiencing and investigating her surroundings in a deeply intimate way. Shown in important international institutions and known for her publications, her presentation at the gallery includes a selection of landscapes alongside her first film. This latest production is to be considered rather a ‘moving image’, where the thin breeze passing through the leaves discloses the quietude that connotes her photography.

Her ongoing quest has brought the artist to travel to remote places from where she returns with few selected photographs on negative film. From the dark room where she develops, images emerge, which have more to do with the artist’s experience of a place rather than a registration of reality. Van der Molen’s practice is determined by her isolation and total immersion in nature to the point where gaze and perception blur.

This intimate, laborious sequence of slow processes of creation reveals a concentration that is the one of a painter: Awoiska van der Molen’s dark, elusive imagery calls for the viewer’s attention to reveal it. Almost as when, entering a dark room, we need our eyes to adjust the vision.

During the exhibition at the gallery a solo show by Awoiska van der Molen will be on view at Museum Kranenburgh (Bergen, NL), opening February 17.