ELLE VAN BAAREN

ABOUT

Want my full portfolio/questions? click here

ARTIST STATEMENT
Elle van Baaren (b. 2000, Neterlands) My artistic process is compulsive, physical and obsessive. My practice produces large sculptures and in-your-face images that push themselves into the space. I work in the area where perception shifts and meaning starts to come apart. My ongoing research into seeing and being seen previously resulted in a panoptic peepshow installation The Panopticum Show (2023), in which the viewer waits for a performance that never begins.

The Panopticum Show, 2023

I like to use imagery from pop culture and mass media to articulate what’s private or suppressed and collect found objects for their raw, intuitive charge; chosen for their potential to trigger recognition, discomfort or memory. I like to manipulate these codes and materials; exaggerating or distorting them until something unstable and alive emerges.

In Bags (2024), a body-sized bag, blonde hair spilling out, just enough to make you wonder: a discarded woman? A trophy? Or just a trick of the eye? On top, a smaller bag, a tail slipping free; fox fur, or something far more intimate? You think you know, but I won’t let you be sure.

In Untitled (2025), a ceramic leg, smooth and vulnerable, floats in the hollowed-out negative of itself. A landscape painting, forced to hold it in place with rough bolts and metal arms. A moment of dislocation, where the absurd and the hopeless are amplified.
Bags, 2024
Untitled, 2025
Alongside my individual practice, I am co-founder of STUDIO MAX & ELLE. On the ground floor I work in my autonomous studio, and on the upper floor is the artist runned projectspace that hosts the ongoing exhibition estafette DOUBLE DATE a monthly, mutating Gesamtkunstwerk. . . click here for more info

STUDIO MAX & ELLE

DOUBLE DATE