Marilou van Lierop (1957), Hulst, the Netherlands; lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium

Marilou van Lierop paints an elusive, alienating, slightly surreal world. Recognisable and at once unfathomable. While painting, she explores natural, social and existential phenomena. She paints the chaos and the helpless ways of man to come to grip it. Our eyes move back and forth over the crowd scenes and find no rest. Van Lierop does not lead our gaze. She does not coerce. There is no centre, no focus, only quiet chaos. In some works she applies white lines as hyphens between people or between an isolated individual and a crowd. In so doing she brings order.

The work of Marilou van Lierop consists of photos or photo collages on which she paints on. As a result, the meaning changes. The original context disappears and is replaced by a new one. Usually small or large groups of people are shown, sometimes immense masses. Not the individual, but the group is key. Initially she painted images of nature, landscapes, without limitation, different points of view were combined into a single work. Thus nature leads a life of its own, which is not subordinate to the human eye. In this way, the complexity and chaos are expressed. And it is this complexity and chaos, found in our social reality, which is the subject of her most recent work. Better said: our inability to deal with, and the strategies that we develop as a response.

The constructions we make, the stories we remember, are ways to escape these complexities. This collective thinking and these methods are exposed. Plans and grids are like a veil placed over reality; not because they necessarily agree with it, but these are the ordinances which we use to engage the world. It is like projecting the known into the unknown, into the "wild". It is scanning / searching for the floating, unspoken stories to be found between people / worlds.

CV Marilou van Lierop
Website Marilou van Lierop

Portfolio Marilou van Lierop B.A.D.Gent 2017
Portfolio Marilou van Lierop Snowflakes
Erick Rinckhout about Marilou van Lierop