Tina Gillen

2nd Floor

Tina Gillen will rep­re­sent the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with Faraway So Close. The exhi­bi­tion, for which the artist is pro­duc­ing a new series of large-scale works, will take the form of an expan­sive painter­ly instal­la­tion in the Luxembourg Pavilion, locat­ed with­in the his­toric premis­es of the Sale d’Armi in Venice’s Arsenale. In Faraway So Close, Gillen directs her atten­tion to the con­nec­tions between the inte­ri­or space and the out­side world.

Concerned pri­mar­i­ly with the medi­um of paint­ing, the work of Tina Gillen exam­ines how we relate to the world around us, name­ly through the themes of land­scape and dwelling. Her paint­ings often orig­i­nate in pho­to­graph­ic images that she mod­i­fies, sim­pli­fies, pic­to­ri­al­ly ​‘trans­lates’, and pairs with oth­er ele­ments to arrive at com­po­si­tions that pur­pose­ful­ly nur­ture a cer­tain ambi­gu­i­ty, some­where between abstrac­tion and fig­u­ra­tion, con­struc­tion and impro­vi­sa­tion, the sur­face of the can­vas and the trans­la­tion of a space.

Faraway So Close is an ambi­tious paint­ing instal­la­tion made espe­cial­ly for the Luxembourg Pavilion. Conceived in response to the his­to­ry of the space as a mil­i­tary stor­age, it brings togeth­er large-scale paint­ings in a sceno­graph­ic treat­ment inspired by paint­ed film back­drops, ​‘as if the paint­ings were only there tem­porar­i­ly, wait­ing to be moved again, rearranged.’

The exhi­bi­tion is an exten­sion of Gillen’s recent pic­to­r­i­al research on the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na that elude our con­trol such as mete­o­ro­log­i­cal events, ris­ing sea lev­els and vol­canic activ­i­ty. Collectively, the paint­ings evoke the four ele­ments that were his­tor­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the con­sti­tu­tion of the uni­verse – earth, water, fire and air –, as well as the ​‘uncer­tain land­scapes’ (Marielle Macé) marked by cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal changes brought by human activities.

At the heart of the instal­la­tion is a sculp­tur­al com­po­nent titled Rifugio (2022), whose shape was inspired by a sea­side bun­ga­low the artist dis­cov­ered on the Côte d’Opale in north­ern France and paint­ed in a pre­vi­ous work on paper. When trans­posed to the exhi­bi­tion space and placed in rela­tion with the paint­ings, this form becomes a pol­y­semic space to the artist, act­ing both as a place for with­draw­al and a gate­way into the world, as a shel­ter and as a space beset by an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion. Faraway So Close speaks to the com­plex­i­ty of the rela­tion­ships that exist between inte­ri­or spaces and the out­side world, between prox­im­i­ty and distance.

Tina Gillen (b. 1972, Luxembourg) has held solo exhibitions at Bozar, Brussels (2015), Mudam Luxembourg (2012), M–Museum, Leuven (2010). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at Mudam Luxembourg (2018, 2010, 2009), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2012), Mu.ZEE, Ostend (2010), Wiels, Brussels (2009), M HKA, Antwerp (2007), and Platform Garanti, Istanbul (2004). Her work has been the subject of two monographic publications, Echo (MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2016) and Necessary Journey (Hatje Cantz, 2009). She lives and works in Brussels.

The project Faraway So Close by Tina Gillen was selected as part of a call for applications launched by the Ministry of Culture in partnership with Mudam. The jury was composed of Suzanne Cotter (Director of Mudam from 2018 to 2021; president of the jury), Kevin Muhlen (Director of Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain), Anke Reitz (Curator of the Steichen Collections – CNA, Clervaux), Dirk Snauwaert (Director of Wiels, Brussels), Lorenzo Benedetti (Curator at Kunstmuseum St.Gallen), Michelle Cotton (Head of Artistic Programmes and Content at Mudam) and Christophe Gallois (Curator, Head of Exhibitions at Mudam).

Commissioner: Ministry of Culture

Curator: Christophe Gallois, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean