Marien Schouten |8

A range of sturdy-looking, battered ceramic fragments, traces of knuckles digging in the clay, fingers poking holes; many pieces adorned with beads, all lavishly glazed. The deceivingly abstract tests and experiments Marien Schouten made at EKWC have a long genealogy in his earlier work, paintings that themselves trace back to art-historic sources. A woman kissing her lover becomes a vampire, who becomes a lion – a young lion wandering in an arcadian landscape, enchanted by all he encounters; a wounded lion, his fur glistening with drops of blood that become petals or beads… For Schouten, the formal themes that develop over decades give depth and reality to his work. They propel and structure the imagination, allowing unconscious associations he doesn’t need to explain. Two heads he made belong to a distinguished lineage of fabulous beasts. This time, Schouten felt he had to remove their eyes. Now they are blind.