Tina Gillen: Faraway So Close

Tina Gillen (b. 1972, Luxembourg) represents the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at the 59th International Venice Biennale with Faraway So Close. The exhibition, which is organized by Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, takes the form of an expansive painterly installation in the Luxembourg Pavilion, located within the historic premises of the Sale d’Armi in Venice’s Arsenale.

Concerned primarily with the medium of painting, the work of Tina Gillen examines how we relate to the world around us, namely through the themes of landscape and dwelling. Her paintings often originate in photographic images that she modifies, simplifies, pictorially ‘translates’, and pairs with other elements to arrive at compositions that purposefully nurture a certain ambiguity, somewhere between abstraction and figuration, construction and improvisation, the surface of the canvas and the translation of a space.

Conceived in response to the history of the space as a military storage, the exhibition brings together new large-scale paintings in a scenographic treatment inspired by painted film backdrops, ‘as if the paintings were only there temporarily, waiting to be moved again, rearranged.’ It is an extension of Gillen’s recent pictorial research on the representation of natural phenomena that elude our control such as meteorological events, rising sea levels and volcanic activity. Collectively, the paintings evoke the four elements that were historically associated with the constitution of the universe—earth, water, fire and air—as well as the “uncertain landscapes” (Marielle Macé) marked by climate and environmental changes brought by human activities.

At the heart of the installation is a sculptural component entitled Rifugio (2022), inspired by a seaside bungalow the artist painted in a previous work on paper. When transposed to the exhibition space and placed in relation to the paintings, this form becomes a polysemic space, acting both as a place for withdrawal and a gateway into the world. Faraway So Close speaks to the complexity of the relationships that exist between interior spaces and the outside world, between proximity and distance.

Publication
The exhi­bi­tion is accom­pa­nied by a richly illustrated cat­a­logue, which includes three new essays by Jean-Philippe Antoine, Marielle Macé and Eva Wittocx, as well as an extensive interview with the artist.
English / French, 256 p.
Publishers: Mudam Luxembourg, Hatje Cantz
Graphic design: Kim Beirnaert
Available at Mudam Store and on mudamstore.com.

Commissioner: Ministry of Culture, Luxembourg
Organiser: Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean
Curator: Christophe Gallois, assisted by Ilaria Fagone | Mudam
With the support of LuXembourg – Let’s make it happen and Kultur | lx - Arts Council Luxembourg