You Can’t Cry When Your Head Is Underwater
Marlene Steyn
5th October – 12th November
PV: 4th October 6 – 9 PM
Marlene Steyn was born in 1989 in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2014 from the Royal College of Art in London, UK, specialising in painting. Prior to this, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, in 2011. Since 2014, Marlene Steyn has presented four critically acclaimed solo exhibitions: How Cannibals Cuddle at Art Cabin in London, in 2014; Mad Love at Lychee One in London, 2015; The End is Located Underneath Her Third Armpit (if the muscle is flexed) in Cape Town, South Africa, 2015. Your Skin Is Not The Best Hiding Place,SMAC Gallery,Cape Town, South Africa ,2016
马琳·丝丹1989年出生于南非开普敦，她在2014年获得伦敦皇家艺术学院的油画艺术硕士学位。在此之前，她在南非Stellenbosch艺术学院得到本科学位。自2014年以来，马琳举办了四次备受好评的个展：2014年伦敦Cabin画廊的How Cannibals Cuddle（食人族是如何拥抱的）; 2015伦敦荔枝一号画廊的Mad Love（疯狂的爱）；南非开普敦画廊The End is Located Underneath Her Third Armpit （结局就在她第三个胳肢窝下）. 2016年她在南非开普敦SMAC画廊举办的Your Skin Is Not The Best Hiding Place（你的皮囊不是最好的躲藏地）展示了她最新创作的大型绘画和雕塑装置。
Notable group exhibitions include: Dreamtime: New Surrealism (2013) at Mirus Gallery in San Francisco, USA; Bloomberg New Contemporaries, first presented at Spike Island in Bristol in 2013 and again in2014 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Also in 2014, Steyn’s work was selected for the Saatchi New Sensations 2014 exhibition at Victoria House in Bloomsbury London; Inoperative Mythology at Blyth Gallery, Imperial College in London and The Luminous Language at The Assembly Rooms in London. In 2015, Steyn completed a residency at Atelier 35 in Bucharest, Romania, where she presented work in the collaborative exhibition, His Sprinkled Blood Served To Fructify Three Golden Apples. That same year, Steyn received the prestigious Vermont Studio Fellowship, and her work was included in La Piscine at Espace CroixBaragnon in Toulouse, France. Recent group exhibitions include All she ever wanted to be at Galleria M in Kolkata, India (2015); LUSH at SMAC Gallery in Stellenbosch, South Africa (2015); Faces & Other Scenarios, a twoperson show at Galerie d’Ys in Brussels, Belgium (2016); Inside Out at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, UK and Across the Divide at Rosenfeld Porcini, London, both in 2016. She has just achieved a collaborative residency with Indianproduct designer Avantika Agarwal at the Shoonya Space – Centre for Art and Somatic Practices in Bangalore, India.
她参加过的群展有： 2013在旧金山Mirus画廊的Dreamtime: New Surrealism（梦想时间：新超现实）; 2013，2014年先后在布里斯托的Spike Island，伦敦ICA 美术馆举行的Bloomberg New Contemporaries（布伦伯格新当代艺术）. 2014年马琳的作品入选伦敦Victoria House 举办的Saatchi New Sensations （萨奇新感觉），英国帝国理工学院Blyth画廊的Inoperative Mythology （失效神话）,和在The Assembly Rooms的展览 Luminous Language（光辉的语言）. 2015年, 马琳完成了在罗马尼亚Bucharest的驻留项目Atelier35并举办双人展His Sprinkled Blood Served To Fructify Three Golden Apples. 同年, 马琳很荣幸地被授予Vermont工作室奖学金, 她的作品在法国图鲁斯的展览La Piscine at Espace Croix¬ Baragnon中展出. 最近的群展包括在印度的Galleria M画廊的All she ever wanted to be (她想变成的一切) (2015); SMAC画廊在南非Stellenbosch分画廊的群展LUSH（丰盛）(2015); 比利时布鲁塞尔Galeried’Ys画廊的双人展Faces & Other Scenarios（面孔和其他剧本） (2016); 英国曼彻斯特Castlefield画廊的群展Inside Out（脑筋急转弯） (2016)，以及伦敦的Rosenfeld Porcini画廊的Across the Divide（越界）(2016). 就在不久之前她刚在Shoonya Space –Bangalore的SomaticPractices艺术中心完成了和印度产品设计师Avantika Agarwal合作的驻留项目。在伦敦的荔枝一号第二个个展之后，她将会为明年在奥地利的展览创作新的作品。
Often been compared with the mysterious master painter Bosch, her work is distinguished by an intense expenditure of imagination that describes a world astray from the gravity of common sense. This unbounded expenditure is often made literal by outgrowths from the canvass and the delirium encased within the formation of images. Eyes are scattered everywhere like seeds. We
are being asked to see double then triple in ways that might invite the redistribution of our own faculty of seeing. Not only that but with eyes of monsters, seducers, enchanters and mystics. It is all simply mixed up and mixed up in ways that create foam of excess. These created worlds are worlds that are quite apart, not just in the sense of dream or fantasy, but with an invitation to see too much. So what is this too much in the world of Marlene Steyn? Is it simply a remote zone inhabited by derangement (poetic and otherwise), is it a vision of a future forever stalling in the half light of reality or is it the translations of the yet to come promised by aesthetic bliss? Indeed if a show should be able to present such things that it must do so as eruption.
经常被拿来和15世纪尼德兰神秘的绘画大师包西做对比，马琳天马行空的想像力，同样从不受我们这个世界的重力所限制。这样的无拘无束的气场转化到画布上并滋生出光怪陆离的幻想。观众的目光好像播种一样，被要求看两遍，看三遍，直到重新调整观看的能力。怪物，引诱者，魔法师，神秘主义者，荒诞离奇地缠绕在一起。这个世界和我们的不同，不只是梦境或幻想，还是一份让观众体验无穷多的邀请。在马琳的世界里，无穷多是什么？也许是某个遥远却诗意的神秘地带，或是永远失速的混沌未来，还是来自远方极乐世界的召唤？艺术家以不可思议的爆发力向我们展现了她的精神世界。
Other Than Ours by Isobel Wohl