MARIE KOETJE // all in

On view June 5 - July 7, 2013
Opening reception for the artist First Friday, June 7 (6 p.m. - 9 p.m.)

In All In, her first solo exhibition at Nationale, Marie Koetje playfully questions formal similarities between the inanimate scope of the still life and the mutating void of the computer screen. Balancing precariously between the simulated realities of abandon and excess, her jostling display of colorful, painted compositions cunningly displaces the gallery’s physical boundaries so as to subvert the viewers’ conception of space and time.

Koetje accentuates this illusion of unstable three-dimensionality by layering her canvases with boldly colored geometric shapes and patterns, spray-painted mists, and thick, childish squiggles. The resulting works evoke the tactility of textiles, while also alluding to society’s data-driven existence. Koetje appears to suggest that, through our constant seduction by the infinite pixels within our iPhone or laptop screens, modern life has fragmented into a constant choreography between the dueling aesthetics of fact and fiction.

BIO
Portland-based painter Marie Koetje received her BFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2008. Her work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions at such establishments as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, and Platform Gallery, Seattle. Her first solo exhibition, Space Invaders, was held at Portland’s Vestibule last year. Koetje has also received numerous awards including the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship from The Yale University School of Art (2006) and an Oregon Arts Commission Career Opportunity Grant (2011).

PRESS
June previews by John Motley for The Oregonian
Review by John Motley for The Oregonian

To request a price list for this exhibition, please email info@nationale.us