Last weekend the Museumplein Polo Amsterdam sporting event 2023 took place right at the heart of the Amsterdam museum quarter; directly between the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concert Hall in the middle of the Museum Square. A truly unique location to enjoy the polo sport.
Celebrating this unique sporting event SmithDavidson Gallery is excited to highlight the renowned Horses series by Dutch fine art photographer Marie Cecile Thijs. The artist’s vision and style can be clearly discerned in "Horse with Blue Eyes", revealing the majestic and even mythical proporties of horses in a minimalist setting.
-
‘I like to play with balance and time. By connecting the past and present, I create a surreal sense of time. Like there is no time in the image, a frozen moment, kind of floating.'
Marie Cecile Thijs -
-
About the artist
Welcome to the surreal world of Marie Cecile Thijs. Portraits of people, animals, flowers and food, they all bear her specific signature. Stillness is key.
Influences reminiscent of the 17th century Old Masters are recurrent in the artist’s work, simultaneously however her personal interpretation is completely contemporary. Thijs plays with her subjects by bringing them to life unexpectedly, or – on the contrary – freezing them in time and space. Objects become characters. They move away from their daily destination, assuming a completely new personality. This provides intriguing creations, where tranquility, motion and sometimes also humor meet. In the works of Marie Cecile Thijs the unusual is usual. She is specialized in staged photography, and created series like White Collar, Food Portraits, Amazones, Horses, Flowers, Birds & Vases, Majestic and Human Angels. She has also taken many portraits of writers, cooks, politicians, designers and artists.
Her Food Portraits, contemporary still lifes with a strong surreal element, were first published in the Financieele Dagblad in 2012 to wide acclaim. This innovative series has since been included in multiple museum exhibitions. For this series Marie Cecile Thijs approaches the subject without any existing assumptions, resulting in unexpected and wondrous connections. Through its meticulous execution the wondrous flying objects often depicted in this series appear utterly realistic and commonplace to the viewer.Marie Cecile Thijs primarily works in series. These continue to expand as new works are created and her series are therefore never officially concluded. Important series such as White Collar and the aforementioned Food Portraits present an insight in the compositional finesse of the artist. In combination with the contrast in the use of light and dark in her work, the result is a surrealist imagery.
In the most recent scenes Green Scenes the artist has created a futuristic world in which mutations have taken place between plants, animals and technique, resulting in an organic symbioses. Marie Cecile Thijs shows us fantastical still lifes from her imagined reality, a fusion between abstract and figurative elements.Other series, such as Horses and Amazons, in which Thijs also are an indication of the profound insight of the artist in her subjects. The intimate yet direct portraits of animals and persons alike confront the viewer with a sense of familiarity and comfort. On the other hand the directness of these stylised portraits also create a sense of discomfort and abstraction. The artworks are therefore both minimalistic and vigorous. This duality - between Old & New, Light & Dark, Intimacy & Distancing - is key to the work of Marie Cecile Thijs.
Multiple series by Marie Cecile Thijs have been published in several media, most notably Het Financieele Dagblad (FD Persoonlijk) and French newspaper Le Monde. Her work has been included in the collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego (MOPA), the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg (Mnha), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (VMFA) and many public and private art collections. She has published several books, including Characters (2013) and Food Portraits (2015).
Marie Cecile Thijs had her first retrospective in Museum aan het Vrijthof Maastricht in 2015. In 2016 she took part in the exhibition Dutch Identity in Museum De Fundatie Zwolle and BAL! at Soestdijk Palace. In November 2016 her 3 month during solo exhibition started at 10 Corso Como Shanghai, China, in cooperation with the Consulate of The Netherlands in Shanghai. In 2017 her works from the series Majestic and White Collar were exhibited in Kunsthal Rotterdam (exhibition Cat Love, Nine lives in the arts). In late 2018 and early 2019 her solo exhibition ‘Between Heaven & Earth’ was on view at Museum Jan Cunen, Oss, The Netherlands. For SmithDavidson Gallery she has participated in numerous group shows and art fairs, including TEFAF Maastricht, Zona Maco Mexico City and Art Miami.
Her solo exhibitions include Argentum (2016) and SOLO (2019-2020).
-
Horses
