Galerie Fontana is pleased to present Jacquie Maria Wessels’ first solo exhibition at the gallery, titled Exploring the Fields. The premiere of Dubious Appeal will be shown alongside earlier works by the artist from her series Garage Stills, Fringe Nature, and Memory Master. Diverse in their thematic foundations, Jacquie Maria Wessels’ analogue photography is both poetic and sinister. The official opening will take place on 2 November from 16:00 to 18:00, during which Jacquie Maria Wessels will be present.
About the Exhibition and Works
Garage Stills stands out for its surprising use of colour. During her visits to various garages, from Amsterdam to Sri Lanka, she explores these wondrous spaces by creating still lifes on the spot with the intriguing and personal objects she finds there. This series can be seen as a precursor to Fringe Nature, in which Jacquie Maria Wessels goes beyond the auto repair garages and focuses her lens on the traces of nature in the immediate vicinity. The meagre presence of foliage evokes the Modernist struggle between nature and urban spaces. The metanarrative of these works references the current changes in the automotive industry, as the relationship between environmentalism and technology comes to the fore.
In Dubious Appeal, Wessels further examines the tension between nature and industry. The flowers, colours, and shapes of these compositions entice the viewer, yet they also possess something threatening. They play with the (unconscious) allure of attractively designed packaging items that feature patterns and hues inspired by nature. Not everything is what it seems in these sometimes sinister analogue photographs; what appear to be flowers may not actually be. Materials destined for disposal find themselves alongside their figurative counterparts.
Memory Master shares a similar visual language with Fringe Nature and Dubious Appeal, characterised by painterly imagery and depictions of nature, creating a phantasmagorical sequence. However, the works on flowing silk represent the memories of places you may have been. The almost mysterious impressionistic images evoke fading memories. The Memory Master Tree Installation (2021) plays with the idea that the trees may capture memories as witnesses to what passes. Since 1988, Jacquie Maria Wessels has been producing this series, which she captures using an analogue 35mm camera.
About Jacquie Maria Wessels
Jacquie Maria Wessels’ work is exhibited worldwide and is included in the collections of several museums, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (NL), Musée de la Photographie Charleroi (BE), Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography in Amsterdam (NL), Vincent van Gogh Huis (NL), and the Surinamese Museum in Paramaribo (SR). In 2023, Ludion (BE) published the photo book Garage Stills & Fringe Nature.