Waanplekken
Vivian Ammerlaan
31.01 - 07.04.2024
Waanplekken presents recent and new work by Vivian Ammerlaan, exploring imagined landscapes that exist somewhere between memory, material, and imagination. The exhibition approaches landscape not as a fixed location, but as a mental and sensory space, shaped by distance, longing, and the desire for the unknown.
Waanplekken 91, 2023
© Vivian Ammerlaan
Waanplekken 89, 2023
© Vivian Ammerlaan
In a time when the world appears fully mapped and documented, Vivian Ammerlaan is drawn to what remains remote and uncharted. Her practice asks how the essence of untouched landscapes can be evoked without physically entering them. Rather than documenting existing places, her work constructs impressions of nature that feel remembered rather than observed.
The ongoing series Waanplekken, initiated in 2015, consists of photographic works combined with everyday materials. Through this layered approach, Vivian Ammerlaan seeks to give form to experiences of overwhelming nature and the sublime. The landscapes she creates do not correspond to identifiable locations, but function as visual echoes of places that exist beyond reach. The exhibition presents recent works from this series, created in 2023.
Alongside this, Ammerlaan introduces new work from her series Tijdloze Leegten (Timeless Voids). Here, time appears to lose its meaning within barren, wind-swept environments where human presence has no place. Using the chemigram technique, she works directly on light-sensitive paper, painting with photographic chemicals rather than capturing light through a lens. By experimenting with aged papers and tea as a coloring medium, she searches for images that remain deliberately elusive — landscapes that resist fixation and seem to exist outside of time.
Tijdloze Leegten 9, 2024
© Vivian Ammerlaan
◼︎ Exhibition views
◼︎ Credits
Curated by Marlike Marks
Vivian Ammerlaan
Cover image © Vivian Ammerlaan