Ellen de Meijer

Digital Divide

February 5, and runs through March 5, 2015

UNIX Gallery  is pleased to present Dutch  artist  Ellen de  Meijer’s first New York solo  show,  Digital Divide. This latest series of paintings follows de Meijer’s successful showings at Art Stage Singapore, Art Toronto and  Art Miami. The opening reception for Digital Divide will be  held  at UNIX Gallery on February 5, from 6 – 8 PM, and  runs through March 5, 2015.

In Digital Divide, Ellen de  Meijer’s works  express a ruminative perspective from what you don’t see to what you feel everyday. De Meijer intends to capture the impact of our postmodern society  on  human behavior and  the  conflict  between our  basic human instincts of love,  greed, fear  and  community, and  our constant desire to progress and succeed.

“Digital Divide is about all of us. The last 20 years we have  ex- perienced an  enormous evolution  mainly  driven  by  technolo- gy and  the digital revolution. But our human instincts have  not changed, despite that  our modern society often  expects us  to ignore  these. It’s this tension that  inspires my work,” says de Meijer.

Ellen de Meijer’s paintings tend  to give the viewer a unique feel- ing of sympathetic tension and  pathos, simultaneously. Her por- traits  show  figures  of successful repute, yet  vulnerable with an empty  gaze. De Meijer’s figures  are  armed with digital gadgets such as Google Glass or iPhones, which refer to our zeitgeist of access to information  and  power. This proliferation  of technology be- comes a point of dependency while our human instincts docilely move to the background. Often they are  portrayed with small,  bizarre objects or wearing rubber cleaning gloves that are  symbolic of a societal obsession with sterilization  and  unattainable perfection.

Ellen de Meijer (b. 1955) is known in Europe for her fine technique and  level of detail in her work. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tilburg (the Netherlands) and  owned an appraised art school in the Netherlands for many  years. Various European art collectors, such as the Dutch  art collection of the Van den  Broek Foundation, hold de Meijer’s work.

Ellen de Meijer