ABOUT
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ARTIST STATEMENT
Elle van Baaren (b. 2000, Neterlands) My artistic process is compulsive, physical and obsessive. I’m drawn to the space between where perception twists and meaning starts to distort. This is where my work operates: not to clarify, but to sustain tension and evoke instinctive reactions or repressed emotions that resist control. I use imagery from pop culture and mass media to articulate what’s private or suppressed and collect found objects for their raw, intuitive charge, chosen for their potential to trigger recognition, discomfort, or memory. I manipulate these codes and materials, exaggerating or distorting them until something unstable and alive emerges.
In Bags (2024), a body-sized bag, blonde hair spilling out, just enough to make you wonder: a discarded woman? A trophy? Or just a trick of the eye? On top, a smaller bag, a tail slipping free; fox fur, or something far more intimate? You think you know, but I won’t let you be sure.
In Untitled (2025), a ceramic leg, smooth and vulnerable, floats in the hollowed-out negative of itself. A landscape painting, forced to hold it in place with rough bolts and metal arms. A moment of dislocation, where the absurd and the hopeless are amplified.