“HIC NON DEFECTUS EST”

by Mari Stoel

Opening ceremony with the artist:
Saturday March 8th, 5-8 pm
Exhibition dates:
March 8th – April 25th, 2014

Ten Haaf Projects is pleased to announce “HIC NON DEFECTUS EST,” a solo exhibition by Dutch artist Mari Stoel. Demonstrating a playful approach towards existential matters, the series of abstract oil paintings, wooden sculptures and photographs brings up the question of whether something is really missing, too much or unnecessarily there.

Returning to Ten Haaf Projects a year after participating in the “Young Dutch Masters” group show, Mari Stoel presents a body of work that shifts the thin line from the old abstract context into a figurative, tangible element; the shape of a wooden plank. While recognised as the most elementary building material, it doesn’t function in its literal surrounding. Instead, it symbolises the desperate grip on abstract understanding, showing a lightly vicious and absurd way of thinking towards the classic abstraction of Mondrian or Suprematism of Malevich through paintings that literally become three-dimensional.

Mari Stoel continues to apply the same concept in his two-dimensional works, but here he suggests true compositions that sometimes turn out rather clumsy yet clearly poetic. His paintings show the sediment of an incidental act, a situation that calls out an elementary way of making and instantly leaving behind. The result on canvas shows a balance between conceptual ri¬¬gour and intuitive painting.




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Born in 1978, Mari Stoel received his MFA from St. Joost School of Fine Art and Design. Buning Brongers prize winner in 2010, Stoel has shown his work throughout the Netherlands, as well as in Chicago and New York. In 2013, he was one of the 25 artists nominated for the Royal Prize for Painting (Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst).