Marleen Sleeuwits - Enter the Cube

Sol LeWitt

The Hague-based artist Marleen Sleeuwits plays tricks with our vision. How do we perceive a space? What do we actually see? And what information do our brains fill in? In the new exhibition Enter the Cube, Sleeuwits establishes a dialogue with the work of the famous American Minimalist artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). The work of both artists investigates the boundaries of perspective and how we experience space. Inspired by LeWitt’s works in which he endlessly explored the shape of a cube, Sleeuwits has built a colourful site-specific three-dimensional

Experience the cube from the inside out
In her photography, objects and installations, Sleeuwits plays with our perception of space and scale. She is fascinated with Sol LeWitt's sketches, which seem very logical and orderly but are actually highly complex. LeWitt returned again and again to the cube, exploring this form through parallel perspective, in which the edges of the cube do not converge at a point. Nonetheless, our eyes and brains still try to visualise this. Fascinated by LeWitt’s studies, Sleeuwits set to work in our exhibition space. In her installation, she built the ribs of a cube and assigned them colours according to a fixed structure, just like LeWitt. What makes her work unique and what distinguishes it from LeWitt’s is the way in which she integrates the architecture of the space. In the first step, she made moulds of the existing pillars in the space and converted them into colourful photographic prints. She then glued these prints to the pillars and to new beams that together form the ‘ribs’ of various cubes. This creates a direct interaction between the artwork and the space, and an interplay between real and suggested space.

To experience this interplay, Sleeuwits invites us to step into the cube. As we walk through the space, we experience how the interplay of lines, shadows and reflections changes depending on our position. Sleeuwits hopes that visitors will initially be amazed but will gradually begin to understand how the space is constructed and then lose themselves again in a space that seems to be infinite.

New works
In addition to Enter the Cube, the exhibition features new and older works in which Sleeuwits explores the relationship between originals, replicas and photography. 

Open-air exhibition 
From 18 January 2025, Sleeuwits’ cube designs will be displayed at the Spiegelfestival, an festival with beautiful, illuminated art objects around the Binnenhof in The Hague. The festival is part of the BinnenhofBuiten programme.

Commission
The Fotomuseum Den Haag regularly invites contemporary artists to respond to a work from the rich collection of the Kunstmuseum, of which the Fotomuseum Den Haag is a part. The invited artist initiates a dialogue with the selected work, re-examining its unique qualities from their perspective. Marleen Sleeuwits was preceded in 2019 by Popel Coumou. The commission has been made possible in part by the generous support of Stroom Den Haag and the Mondriaan Fund.

Marleen Sleeuwits
Marleen Sleeuwits (NL, 1980) is a multidisciplinary artist. She studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and at AKV St. Joost in Breda. Her photographs, objects and installations have been exhibited internationally, including at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, Foto Levallois in Paris, the Centre Photographique Rouen, the Museum für Konkrete Kunst in Ingolstadt and the Jeonju Photo Festival in South Korea. She won the Meijburg Art Commission in 2019 and was nominated for the Prix de Rome in 2021. Her work is in the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and AkzoNobel, among others. Sleeuwits is represented by Gallery Bart in Amsterdam and Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York.

Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt (USA, 1928-2007) was a pioneer of American Minimalist art. The Haags Gemeentemuseum (now Kunstmuseum Den Haag) hosted LeWitt’s first major survey exhibition in 1970 and the museum maintained a close relationship with the artist until his death. This resulted in the acquisition of several important works, including eye-catching Wall Drawings in the corridors and stairwells of the Kunstmuseum and a relief on the facade of the Fotomuseum Den Haag.