Marlene Dumas: Against the Wall

Known for her unique approach to canvas and her thought-provoking subject matter, MARLENE DUMAS is one of today’s most important painters. Her work is characterized by a sensual and gestural technique that is also swift, dry, and minimal, as if under pressure to leave only what is necessary. While she lives and works in The Netherlands, the artist was born and raised in South Africa, and her paintings have often drawn from her own experiences of living with apartheid. Her paintings integrate complex themes—ranging from segregation, eroticism, or, more generally, the politics of love and war—to explore how image-making is implicitly involved not only in the cultural processes of objectification, but also in the way in which events are documented and collectively understood.

Dumas often bases her practice upon the translation of found imagery and explores the tension between the photographic documentation of reality and the constructed, imaginary space of painting. The works in this book have evolved primarily from media imagery and newspaper clippings documenting Israel and Palestine. However, Dumas’s representations acknowledge universal themes of instability, isolation, and the lack of communication, while moreover addressing the medium of painting.