Biography
Marjolein Rothman (Eibergen, the Netherlands, 1974) received her education at the A.K.I. in Enschede (1994-1999) and was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2003 and 2004. She has been awarded the Dutch Royal Prize for Painting in 2004. She has exhibited in the Netherlands at: Nieuw Dakota Amsterdam, De Kunsthal, Rotterdam, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Stadsgalerij Heerlen, De Vishal Haarlem, De Nederlandsche Bank and Motive Gallery Amsterdam. Abroad, her works were presented at the Fiac Paris, ARCO Madrid, Art Cologne and Art Miami. In March 2009 Rothman had her first soloshow abroad, at Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm which was followed by a second solo exhibition at the gallery in May 2012 and her most recent solo show in Stockholm in November 2017. In December 2013, she showed her work in Antwerp at NK Gallery, together with Judit Hettema. In December 2017 she will have a solo exhibition at NK Gallery. Since 2011 Marjolein Rothman lectures Fine Art at ArtEZ Enschede. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
In her work Marjolein Rothman seeks by way of painting to deconstruct specific cultural symbols. In 2003 she started to paint official monuments, historical figures and relics. The series ‘Iconography I’ (2006), consists of large-scale portraits of two 19th century French saints, Bernadette de Soubirous and Therese de Lisieux. Successively anonymous figures were portrayed in the same manner in ‘Iconography II’ (2007). The following series:‘Gaze’ (2012) questions specific aesthetic codes. In 'And So It Stays' (2017) marjolein Rothman chose to base her paintings on photos that show Rothman herself and her own children. Here she seems to raise the question of what gives value to even the most personal, most intimate events in our lives.
Her work presents an on-going research on the act of looking or gazing. In all of these series Rothman creates material metaphors for the ambiguity that characterizes specific representations. Iconic images of the past reappear in her paintings fragmented, incomplete or as a mere shadow or projection.
Rijksakademie 2004, photo: Ilse Frech