Focus: Lin de Mol

Focus is a new series of emails from LANGart in which we put the spotlight on one of the gallery’s artists. In the current era, in which we have had to significantly reduce personal contact, it seemed a good idea to make the person behind the art more visible. We start this series with a closer acquaintance with Lin de Mol.

In our last newsletter you already read about Lin de Mol and her activities in Sweden. But there is more about her that we would like to share with you.

LANGart has been working with Lin de Mol since 2010.

In 2005 we got to know Lin de Mol better during the “Crysalis” exhibition in Bari. Before that, she was one of the artists of the gallery next to us at the time, Lumen Travo, so we saw her work every now and then when she had an exhibition there. When the relationship between them ended, Lin and us got in touch and decided to work together. In the years that followed Lin made a few beautiful solo exhibitions, “Heavenly Game” first in 2011 and “The Sound of a Humming Bee” in 2015, more recently the exhibition “Pioneer” in 2017 and to top it all off her stunning solo at ArtRotterdam “Art = Medicine” in 2020.

Lin’s work appeals to us because of the intimacy that seems to be the leading motive in all her work.  Lin always works with her immediate “social” environment.  She mainly uses herself, and sometimes her husband or daughter, as a model.  She seeks the ‘geographic’ environment herself, which can be the intimacy of a room in her house or a completely desolate place somewhere in Iceland, Ireland or in the desert of Mexico.  In those deserted landscapes, beautiful artworks arose, with props brought along and the possibilities offered by nature on the spot.  Coincidence played an important role, which was intensified by the limited time the self-timer allowed her to properly catch herself and the props. And Lin is not easily pleased, so that game with the elements and the shutter speed was also not easily played. The stories she tells in her films, video installations, photos and drawings are always autobiographical, but never sentimental.  The intimacy is felt rather than seen or understood, because it touches on universal emotions.  She currently lives and works in Sweden. Traveling to other places no longer seems necessary: Her new home offers more than enough possibilities.  In the woods around her house she takes long walks with her dog, whereby the works develop slowly but surely from idea to – currently often – photos.  In the winter, Lin works indoors in her studio. There she makes her sculptures from natural stone. Also in these works, nature plays an important role. The interventions she makes in them, the additions to that nature, keep her leading motive alive. Lin sees creating art as, by origin, a magical act. A symbolic gesture to bring an object or a surface to life. Continuing on that thought, to her art is a transmitter of energy, and works of art like batteries onto which you can plug yourself.  She even imagines it as a visual frequency or a sound, something like the buzzing of a bee. In her work she also experiments with the idea that creating and experiencing art can be a healing aid. After all, art can make beauty out of pain while the creative process itself provides peace and focus, almost like a form of meditation. While her hands are working, the mind is free and can be open to insights. Over time, these works become an artistic experiment. What is art capable of? Can it help someone else? Can art provide a space of comfort and thus increase the human capacity for compassion? These questions have since taken on a wide range of shapes and materials: From abstraction to figuration and from heavy rock to ethereal materials such as powder, silk and even light.  In an exhibition, the individual works become an installation, in which not so much the chosen medium, but more so the content and intention bring about recognisability and coherence.  By staying close to herself, Lin stays with the universal that makes us human, call it feeling, emotion or love.