ROTTERDAM.- On Thursday 6 October, Anouk Griffioen's solo exhibition Navigating the Imaginary opened in TENT Rotterdam. Griffioen responds to new digital developments by using techniques such as video mapping for her drawings, and in doing so she takes her traditional art practice onto new roads.

For over fifteen years now Anouk Griffioen has been working on creating a distinctive oeuvre of monumental charcoal drawings, which she sometimes works on for months in a delicate hand. Griffioen’s drawings are characterized by their dream-like aesthetics, in which the observer literally feels overrun by nature. Her black and white panoramas of mysterious animal and plant kingdoms evoke a sensation that balances between a beneficent experience of beauty and a sense of foreboding.

Navigating the Imaginary
In the exhibition, Griffioen presents both new and recent work. The installation Navigating the Imaginary takes centre stage: a twenty-two metres long charcoal drawing, which Griffioen has been working on intensively over the past two years. For the passers-by in the Witte de Withstraat, this immense work functions as an enlarged diorama. From the street almost nothing can be seen; Anouk Griffioen’s rich world of ideas unfurls itself through only one narrow window. Aside from drawings, Anouk Griffioen also presents the video sculpture Flo, in which a girl wanders through a drawn space. This romantic tableau is projected onto a cube by means of a special video mapping technology, whereby we are absorbed into her perception of the world. In the work Foliage (2016) the visitor stands opposite an immense, almost impenetrable foliage which comes to life with the visitor's every movement within the space, due to motion sensors. A major leitmotiv for Griffioen comes to the fore in a series of portrait drawings in which human figures enveloped in sheets and blankets are depicted. Are they hiding themselves, or, to the contrary, are they about to reveal themselves? Better than anybody else, Griffioen knows how to capture the precarious balance between secrecy and transparency, between stillness and motion, in her mysterious work.

Anouk Griffioen (Enschede, 1979) lives and works in Rotterdam. She has exhibited in Hauser Gallery Zurich, Mathilde C. Gallery Paris, Flatland Gallery Amsterdam, Pictura Dordrecht and RAM foundation in Rotterdam. She explores the boundaries of visual art by working together with other disciplines such as fashion and architecture. For instance, she designed a sweater together with the label Anecdote (2015) and a scarf for accessory label The Boyscouts (2014). In 2011, she joined forces with Humanoid for the Arnhem Mode Biennale. In addition, Griffioen is actively involved with Orange Babies, a foundation set up to assist pregnant women suffering from HIV in developing countries. Her drawings can regularly be seen in the TV series Penoza, as the work of the character Nathalie van Walraven. In 2013, she was awarded De Kracht van Rotterdam (The Power of Rotterdam) for her photography. Griffioen studied Fine Art at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and History of Art at Leiden University.