Galerie Fontana Amsterdam would like to welcome you to the opening of the first solo exhibition of Inez de Brauw @ Fontana.
In The Muse Withdraws, de Brauw turns to the 17th-century genre of Gallery paintings – richly detailed works filled with other paintings, originating in the Low Countries. Within these paintings-within-paintings – a form of mise en abyme – she searches for the women: the muses. Their presence, gaze, and role are reexamined, along with the subtle codes that surround them, from precious objects with provenances in exploitation, to painted dogs that suggest good manners, status and chastity.
The works are formally inspired by historical revisionism: erasure, blurring and repainting are seen as acts of reviewing history. Figures step forward or slip from view; roles are exchanged. The privilege of appearing within the frame, and the power to decide who may appear, is questioned. The balance between maker and muse shifts, between the personal and the political, as familiar scenes are quietly rewritten. What remains is a play of gazes and meanings, where beauty and power take turns – and the muse slowly withdraws, ready to assume a new role.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Inez De Brauw (b. 1989, The Hague) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. She graduated cum laude and obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from HKU Utrecht in 2014. In 2016 and 2017 she was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and also participated in residencies at EKWC (NL, 2022), Vermont Studio Center (US, 2023) Golden Foundation (US, 2024) and LIA (DE, 2024). De Brauw's work has been exhibited in Kunsthal Rotterdam, Artericambi Gallery in Verona, Italy, Archiv Massiv, Leipzig, Germany, SBK Amsterdam, Art Rotterdam and many other places. Her work is part of various collections, such as ING, AMC, Eneco, KPMG, De Nederlandse Bank and the NNgroup. She was nominated for numerous awards and in 2017 she got the Young Talent Award from the Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund, was nominated for Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2018 and won the NN Public Art Award (2022). De Brauw received various grants, most recently the Mondrian Fund Basic Grant (2023).
Throughout her work, Inez de Brauw shows a fascination with the objectification of time-bound discourses. Her recent paintings draw on historical gallery paintings, using the act of painting itself as a means to explore historical revisionism. Erasure, blurring, and repainting as acts of reviewing historical imagery. Earlier works, inspired by time-bound trends in interior design and art history, focus on ideas of the ideal life, while questioning which desires specific trends echo and amplify.
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