140 X 70 cm
Egg tempera on canvas
Miriam Vlaming at the Neue Galerie Gladbeck – kunst & gut 08/25
Author: Thomas Hirsch
Miriam Vlaming’s paintings are finally being comprehensively presented in the Ruhr region. Vlaming was born in Hilden near Düsseldorf in 1971. She studied there and, above all, at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig under Arno Rink and is considered part of the New Leipzig School. Her exhibition in Gladbeck now illustrates how her figurative paintings tell their own stories and, interspersed with abstractions, have a unique resonance. Take “I Feel You” (2025), the most recent of the paintings on display there. It shows a group of people in formal suits and dresses, gathered together as if for a picnic. Seen from above in sketch-like, precise notation, it seems – beyond the art-historical quotation – to be a memory from days gone by, still surrounded by expressive, gestural, restrainedly colored surfaces and fragments of nature. Above it all is the title in block letters. It delimits the scene at the front. At the same time, a dialogue opens up between the viewers and the scene in the picture, as if from offstage, where knowledge is replaced by intuition and feeling.
Die souverän kuratierte Ausstellung in Gladbeck umfasst Gemälde seit 2005, ohne mit dem Anspruch einer Werkschau aufzuwarten. Jedes Bild steht für sich, aber eines leitet zum anderen und beeindruckt durch das malerische Vermögen, die sinnliche Attraktivität und die existenzielle Botschaft. Und durch die Geheimnisse, die inmitten der Farben aufblitzen.
As is often the case with Miriam Vlaming, this image seems to have fallen out of time. In her paintings, we see events that we associate with the adventure books and dreams of our youth, set against a backdrop of pure painting. In between, however, there are references to the present day, the acceleration of life and our urge to expand, our precarious relationship with nature and the loss of sensory experience. With pulsating details and the theatricality of pictorial light and points of light, her paintings maintain a balance between proximity and distance, familiarity and strangeness. At times, they convey an exotic tone, for example when ritually painted members of an African tribe appear or a jungle and the coast of a sea build up behind or in front of a group of people. The elements of nature play a central role, while at the same time stimulating memories and the imagination, bringing to mind expeditions, for example. Many of Vlaming’s paintings are based on old photographs from the collective archive and from personal albums, although she detaches herself from the originals during the painting process. She prefers to paint with egg tempera, which she applies in glazes. At the same time, she allows the paint to drip and flow in rivulets, so that parts of the representational disappear into the painting—or grow out of it. The figures often have a ghostly quality. On unstable ground, surrounded by a dim, foggy, but star-lit space, they appear fleetingly captured, faded, and unstable, as if temporary.
The masterfully curated exhibition in Gladbeck includes paintings from 2005 onwards, without claiming to be a retrospective. Each painting stands on its own, but one leads to the next, impressing viewers with its painterly skill, sensual appeal, and existential message. And with the secrets that flash amid the colors.
Miriam Vlaming | until Aug 15th 2025 | Neue Galerie Gladbeck