Gallery artist Nelleke Cloosterman's first solo exhibition in London

In the exhibition, which takes its title from a poem by Louise Glück, Cloosterman’s new series of paintings, consider transformation through themes of coming-of-age, utopian love, loss and inner conflict. Surreal juxtapositions, symbolic imagery and still lifes inhabit different, sometimes hidden layers of the new works, creating destabilising spaces that play with reality. In Song of invisible boundaries, three dancing female figures, emerge from different layers of the picture plane. Through extensive layering techniques and gradients, the work plays with flatness, illusion and three-dimensionality. For the composition, Cloosterman referenced found images from lingerie ads and as an act of subverting the male gaze, asked her sisters to stage those poses, turning stock images into moments of familial love, and then again to digital images and collages, from which she then painted the figures. Through this process, Cloosterman deconstructs context creation, thereby exposing the artifice in the production of the images, making us question the illusion and its aims. The process also slows down the act of consuming the images, and marked by shifts in time and positionality, complicates the notion of looking.