Hellen Van Meene
“The Dissolve”
New York, 525 West 22nd Street
n her sixth solo exhibition at the gallery, Dutch artist van Meene continues her exploration of female identity with 20 photographs made between 2016 and 2023. Many of her young subjects are on the cusp of adulthood and van Meene highlights both the psychological tension and confusion often experienced during these transitional years. Her unique visual language employs an exceptional use of natural, luminous light reminiscent of 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.
Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, V&A, wrote in the book Hellen van Meene: The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Aperture 2015), “Each photo resounds with painterly color harmonies. She has a lucid understanding of the nuances of natural light: how it can transform a scene before the lens into a picture that distills and then transcends the depiction of reality. Coupling this with her choreographed scenes and her intuitive use of gesture in the faces and attitudes enacted by her subjects, she has consistently produced the condition for photographic transformations.”
Van Meene’s subjects are often caught in dreamlike states or otherworldly situations. In one, a bride stands calmly as the train of her wedding dress ignites in a semi-circle of flames. In another, a sitter cradles a fish like a baby, and in another, butterflies carefully position themselves on the subject’s face, neck, and chest. One young woman immersed in a body of water is surrounded by flowers while fully dressed, recalling Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Van Meene’s subjects appear detached and unflummoxed about their unusual situations, absorbing the ambiguity of being at the brink of adulthood, while caught in the liminal space between childhood and womanhood.
