This autumn, the first solo museum exhibition by visual artist Roos Holleman will open at Museum JAN in Amstelveen: a large number of new, monumental pastel drawings alongside existing work. Holleman is fascinated by the intertwined relationship between humans and nature: how we shape it and how it shapes us. Her drawings show an environment that is not a backdrop but rather a mirror: transient and tender.

Dead things

Even during her studies at the St. Joost art academy in Breda, Holleman (Tilburg, 1989) collected dead things. ‘To understand life, you need death’. Birds that flew into the old bell tower of the St. Joost monastery, skulls and bones: she took them home and had to draw them. ‘Forms from nature fascinate me immensely, but our view of that nature fascinates me even more: how we look, organise, isolate, desire and even erase.’

Natural cosmetics

Holleman has created a series of drawings of moths and night butterflies, entitled Cosmetics. These creatures are often inconspicuous and active at night. When folded, their wings serve as camouflage on leaves or wood, but when unfolded, the most beautiful colours emerge: soft pink, lilac, purple. The shape is reminiscent of a mouth with pink-painted lips.

Different eyes

In her new work, Holleman plays with a characteristic of birds of paradise that is invisible to the human eye: their fluorescent feathers. The result, in radioactive-coloured pastel chalk, is alienatingly abstract. Holleman studied these birds in natural history museums, but also in the jungle of Papua New Guinea.

Giant drawings

Hollemans' favourite medium is pastel chalk on paper. What is remarkable is the large format she works in: drawings that are usually 220 cm high or long. She has created four special works measuring 240 x 300 cm for Museum JAN. In this way, she allows the viewer to have a real encounter (eye to eye) with the subject – even if it is a moth. The large format also gives the animals something human, turning them into characters you might encounter on the street or on the catwalk.

Eye-catching

The strong zoom on the feathers of the moth and bird wings, combined with the powdery pastel chalk, makes Holleman's work tactile and eye-catching: you want to touch it. Holleman's impressive, sensory-stimulating giant drawings are shown to their best advantage in the spacious rooms of Museum JAN.