Review in a daily Dutch Newspaper about Museum Jan G. Marque 2003.
Jan G. Marque in Gallery Afterdaan in Elim.
Painter with Romantic Nature.
Review by journalist Gerard Berends.
Gallery Afterdaan in Elim (the Netherlansds) has become a museum. Until the autumn you can find here Museum Jan G. Marque, who presents his philosophical realism under the title ‘The challenging game called reflection.’ Who sees and reads the work of this philosopher/ painter in the gallery, could easily be tempted to drift away with the theories about his art. With every painting comes a signed map with comments and explanations. This means that you take a seat at the high table and read. Not an easy job to do if I say so. See titles like ‘The Belief of the One Who Loses, Loneliness of Real Friendship, The Madness of Happiness, Understanding Means Calm and than there is the ‘The Eyes of a Dead….-series (Dead Shaman, Dead Threesome Janus, Dead Writer, etc). And on one painting depicted books, entitled ‘Bible, Nirvana, The Name of the Rose.’
Jan G. Marque is an artist with romantic nature so, not afraid for sentimentality and someone with questions. His landscapes with their capricious rock mass, with fantasized churches, with unnatural glowing light, show either a dream world or a lost world. There is no coincidence. The Figures with their gestures, postures and actions point to symbolic meanings. But no trace of irony.
And yet it’s intriguing work. It’s remarkable and special. Who dares to paint like this? Besides it’s painted well, even in the abstract elements.
The first association by looking at this work goes in the direction of the Renaissance. Marque who himself makes his own paint shows him related to the now living in Brugge Dutchman Evert Thielen (recently at the Cobra Museum Amstelveen). Besides that his work sometimes resembles the work of the meta-realists. But this is different. Marques paintings are suggesting stories. Stories that everyone has to complete with his or her own fantasy. What story do we fill in by seeing a wounded man in a desolate landscape and with a tottering church on the background?
- Exhibition.
Museum Jan G. Marque in gallery Afterdaan, Elim, the Netherlands. Untill the 21st September 2003. Open: Friday, Saturday and Monday, plus every first Sunday of the month. 1300- 17:00 hour.
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The Seventh Seal, Jan G. Marque 2001.
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