About the artist
Marie Cecile Thijs plays with her subjects by bringing them to life unexpectedly, or – on the contrary – freezing them in time and space. Objects become characters. They move away from their daily destination, assuming a completely new personality. This provides intriguing creations, where tranquility, motion and sometimes also humor meet. In the works of Marie Cecile Thijs the unusual is usual.
Marie Cecile Thijs is specialized in staged photography, and created series like White Collar, Food Portraits, Amazones, Horses, Flowers, Human Angels, Majestic, Elizabeth, Birds & Vases and Green Scenes. She has also taken many portraits of writers, cooks, politicians, designers and artists.
Her Food Portraits, contemporary still lifes with a surreal element, were first published in the Financieele Dagblad and French newspaper Le Monde. This innovative series has since been included in multiple museum exhibitions.
For this series Marie Cecile Thijs approaches the subject without any existing assumptions, resulting in unexpected and wondrous connections. Through its meticulous execution the wondrous flying objects often depicted in this series appear utterly realistic and commonplace to the viewer.
Marie Cecile Thijs primarily works in series. These continue to expand as new works are created and her series are therefore never officially concluded. Series such as White Collar and the aforementioned Food Portraits present an insight in the compositional finesse of the artist.
In combination with the contrast in the use of light and dark in her work, the result is a surrealist imagery. In the most recent series Green Scenes the artist has created a futuristic world in which mutations have taken place between plants, animals and technique, resulting in an organic symbioses.
Marie Cecile Thijs shows us still lifes from her imagined reality, a fusion between abstract and figurative elements. Other series, such as Horses and Amazones, are also an indication of the profound insight of the artist in her subjects. The intimate yet direct portraits of animals and persons alike confront the viewer with a sense of familiarity and comfort. On the other hand the directness of these stylised portraits also create a sense of discomfort and abstraction. Her works are therefore both minimalistic and vigorous. This duality – between old & new, light & dark, intimacy & distancing – is key to the work of Marie Cecile Thijs.
In november 2023 Marie Cecile Thijs has been awarded as Artist of the Year 2024 (Foundation Kunstweek). Her work has been included in the collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, LAM Museum Lisse, Museum Rotterdam, the Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego (MOPA), the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg (Mnha), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (VMFA) and many public and private art collections.
Her work has also been included in group exhibitions in Kunsthal Rotterdam & Museum de Fundatie Zwolle and has been shown in solo exhibitions in Museum aan het Vrijthof Maastricht, 10 Corso Como Shanghai (Galeria Carla Sozzani), Palazzo Saluzzo Paesana Turin and Museum Jan Cunen.
Her works have been exhibited at several artfairs, like Photo London, Paris Photo online, Art Miami, Art New York, PhotoFairs Shanghai, Zona Maco Mexico, PAN Amsterdam and TEFAF Maastricht.
