For this exhibition, Cloosterman creates walls that are shaped like cards and look like they have randomly been spread into the space.
The title Cardshark refers to someone who makes money by cheating at card games, as well as to the very cards the artist uses in her paintings as vanitas symbols. This might suggest that the exhibited cards have been thrown away by the cardshark (a gambler), thus echoing the vanitas symbol of gambling with life.
The paintings hanging onto the card-walls become windows to Nelleke Cloosterman’s painterly universe. During her work-in-progress at CENTRALE | lab, this universe will expand, a multitude of these ‘windows’ being added, eventually forming a global installation bringing together multi-layered narratives.
Using classic art historical themes and motives – such as plants, animals and soap bubbles – Cloosterman creates a universe that looks familiar, yet often escapes logic or natural laws. Abstract dream landscapes, a flower garden that presents vegetation from every season, or birds flying high in the sky without wings, these are all subtle disruptions of a reality to be received by the viewer. The gradients that we frequently see in her paintings suggest the compression of time, which contributes to the idea that the painting is not a snapshot but an ongoing landscape where the elements of the painting tell a story.
Nelleke Cloosterman (1996) received her BFA and MFA in Belgium at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Gent en became a HISK alumni in 2021.