Stephanie Maeseele
°13.04.1985
currently working in Ghent, Belgium
EDUCATION
2004-2007 Bachelor Visual Art Sint-Lucas Ghent
2008 Master Visual Art Sint-Lucas Ghent
2010 Specific Teacher degree Sint-Lucas Ghent
2015-2017 TURPS BANANA Studio Painting Programme, South East London
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EXHIBITIONS
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*Opera Aperta
Villa De Bondt, Ghent
16.09.23>15.10.23
*Vicarious Travels through Hypothetical Places
N1 5RA Shoreditch London, UK
10.09.22
*Feast Of Fools
Galleri HI10, Skien, Norway
25.10.19>03.11.19
*The Deal
Maison du Peuple Sint-Gillis Brussels
15.02.2019>27.02.2019
*Unreliable Narratives
Studio Land Van Waaslaan 155c Ghent
11.11.18
*Baring Teeth
Gallery 98, Ramsgate CT11 9RX
14.04.2018>12.05.2018
*Another Country
Wheelhouse, 1820 3RD Ave N Suite 100, Birmingham AL, USA
06.11.2017>17.11.2017
*TURPS 2015-17 Graduate Show
Art Bermondsey Project Space, SE1 3UW London
13.07.2017>22.07.2017
*The House protects The Dreamer
solo show, B & B Project Space, Tontine street Folkestone
17.02.2017>19.02.2017
*Turps Studio programme Open Studios
Turps Gallery + studios SE17 2UQ London
09.12.2016>10.12.2016
*Turps//Studio Programme 2016
Art Bermondsey project Space London SE1 3UW
17.08.2016>27.08.2016
*Turps Painting Programme Open Studio and Mentors' exhibition
Turps Gallery + studios SE17 2UQ London
01.07.2016>03.07.2017
*No Monkey Business
Chinese Open 2016 Q-Park Chinatown WC2H 7PR London
14.02.2016
*Turps Painting Programme 1st year Interim Show
Turps Gallery SE17 2UQ London
19.02.2016>21.02.2016
*Tentoonstelling Stephanie Maeseele
solo show; A&P gallery Ghent, Belgium
09.10.2015>01.11.2015
*Happy House#5
Ledeberg-Ghent, Belgium
29/30.11.2013
01.12.2013
*"Vrijheid, Blijheid, Schilderssoevereiniteit"
in co-operation with Jan Van Imschoot
PAK Gistel, Belgium
13.10.2013>15.12.2013
*BYTS Bosch Young Talent Show
stedelijk museum 's-Hertogenbosch,
The Netherlands
21.09.2013>27.10.2013
*“Cadavre Exquis. A figure of painting”
LLS 387 space for contemporary art
Lange Leemstraat 387 Antwerp
16.03.2013>28.04.2013
*VERSUS by Happy house
De Campagne Gijzelstraat 12 Drongen
27/28.10.2012
01/04.11.2012
*PRESTIGE Sophie Van Akenstraat 13 Ghent
20/21.10.1012
*POP-UP Artistieke banden
21.06.12>09.09.2012
Museum van Elsene, Jean van Volsemstraat 71 B- 1050 Brussels
*HAPPY HOUSE#1
10/11/12.03.2012
Onafhankelijkheidslaan Ghent
*A REQUEST FOR MORE MUZES AND MOTHERS
16 December 2011 SECONDroom
St-Pietersnieuwstraat 21 Ghent
In co-operation with Jan Van Imschoot
*DE CONNECTIE
Group Exhibition Nucleo
Lindelei Ghent
1 tot 10 December 2011
*NUCLEO Open Atelier Lindelei Ghent
Group Exhibition 16-17 October 2010
*PANAROMATIC, a cross atlantic response
Espace Ladda Ghent (February 2009)
*OUT OF CONTROL
VUB Brussels (13/11 – 12/12 2008)
*Mastermarathon ‘They shoot horses, don’t they’
Sint-Lucas Ghent (June 2008)
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ARTIST STATEMENT
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"Over the past few years my work has been a fairly consistent search for various possibilities of collage to represent and reflect the processes of memory and recall. Combining not only stylistic tropes but also found subject matter and combining them in engaging ways has been a recurrent theme. I use collage as a device to question perception. Painting as camouflage. It can be seen as a deconstructive tool designed to undermine the certainty of appearances. My main focus seems to be moving toward the role of the spatial structure and how depth and/or flatness can create an underlying emotional tone within which the more obvious subject and object matter can operate. As so often it is the elements which are not so obvious at first which exercise a great degree of agency. So exploiting the possibilities of oil paint to evoke and render new meanings, remains a constant. I use a broad range of references in my work. I do consider my work as autobiographic, I may use a nostalgic feeling or an anecdote as a starting point without it becoming the overruling content of the painting, but rather as catalyst for a critical view. I try to create a new space, one where figure and space overlap. The figure becomes the space, becomes an object and vice versa."
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Colin Smith, British painter
“The physical world we inhabit seems so solid, mundane, reliable, yet we are told that more than ninety nine percent of an atom is empty space. The same is true of the memory by which to a large extent we define our individual personality. Mutable and transitory, are these very memories and experiences in the paintings of Stephanie Maeseele.
Objects, instantly recognizable, drift and mutate. Memories, on which most of her work is based, mix and merge as if viewed through a series of overlapping screens or veils. No obvious ploys to create ambiguity exist as in so much of the generic Surrealism of contemporary Belgian painting, no such contriving of deliberate weirdness. They are honest, clear, yet disruptive and evocative. Landscapes merge with Interiors, domestic artifacts change scale and appear in fortuitous places. Faces, bodies, people, come and go through solid objects, phantoms float through the hallways of memory yet are calm, untroubling and matter of fact. The works are largely based on drawing yet the process of their making is totally integrated with and at one with painterly fact. The imagery seems completely at ease with the process which manifests it, an apparently fluid, natural unfolding of the medium.
They confound our expectations, yet in the most benign, beguiling and seductive way. She has created a unique form of collage, so much at the core of the contemporary understanding of what constitutes the Psyche.”
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Jan van Imschoot, Belgian painter
“Stephanie Maeseele is an emerging young Belgian painter who is working in the tradition of the Low Lands, where walking on the thin line between reality and imagination is an important part of the history of it's painting. Since about ten years I noticed the work of Maeseele and where she, in the beginning , worked on the tension between a more graphical presence and a painterly solution , she found a freedom to use different techniques.Her painting escaped out of the prison of drawing, as she understands very well how to find liberty which inspires to find new meanings in painting. Image on image., double projections to combine different ways of thinking. She is not avoiding complexity, but still she can tell her painterly story in a clear language. She is not afraid to create a visual jungle, to take risks and she is able to tease the limits of the old aunt, called painting, to give her a contemporary energy.”
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"Stephanie Maeseele's style of painting touches the fragile border area where drawing and painting meets. It's that magical point where painters within the evolution of painting have started searching and where many stumbled on the question as to how the skeleton of drawings is related to the the muscle mass of painting. Stephanie Maeseele has settled in this area in an almost natural manner, whereby she, at first sight, paints everyday scenes without any moralising undertone. The people closest to her; family, friends and especiallyher twin sister, feed her imagination to design compositions which subtly the confusion element of the abundant image information. As in the case with Manet, she has managed to develop associations with both Western art history as well as current themes which go beyond their original meaning. A young women in a summer's dress, who cools herself down with a fan, loses her innocence in the eyes of the beholder because he automatically establishes stigmatising links with the two conversing men in the background ('Suzanna an the elders' and 'le dejeuner sur l'herbe' provide support). I have an indestructible weakness for paintings which refuse to charm or make concessions for temporal trends. Stephanie Maeseele's work is instantly noticeable in between the cream sauce paintings of the last decades as a result of the honest directness of her imagery, the omission of any painterly adjectives and the no-nonsense style of her subjects."