Artist: Paul Geelen
Exhibition title: Sliding under Traces
Curated by: Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk
Venue: A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Date: February 11 – March 13, 2016
Photography: Najiba Brakkee, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam
The C.o.C.A. Foundation Art Prize is an award and a grant for young artists living in the Netherlands. For the sixth edition of the award, A Tale of a Tub presents the starting point for a new series of works by artist Paul Geelen (Weert, 1983) in the exhibition Sliding under Traces. Within his artistic practice, Paul Geelen examines the similarities and possible cross-pollination between science, chemistry and art, often in the form of process-based and sculptural installations. As part of the grant, Paul Geelen traveled to Chile to collect materials there to investigate the origins of the rejuvenating effects of snail slime. He associates this process with a study of the oldest preserved mummies in the world. Geelen combines these two areas of research and translates them on the basis of his artistic practice into a series of artistic proposals regarding the possibilities of a new life elixir.
Paul Geelen was born in 1983 in Weert, The Netherlands. From 2004 to 2008 he studied at the AKV | St. Joost in Breda. In 2014 he completed his two-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include Survival Blur at Grey Light Projects, Brussels (2015), Percussive Hunter at Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (2015), Axis Mundi (Art as a Healing Tool) at Moinsun, Paris (2015), The Hidden Picture at Cobra Museum Amstelveen (2014), Ofspring at De Ateliers, Amsterdam (2014) and Æon Flux at P ///// AKT, Amsterdam (2014). Geelen lives and works in Amsterdam.
