Exhibition ‘Anne Geene. Out of the Ordinary’

Discover how Dutch artist Anne Geene transforms the everyday into the extraordinary, and delight in her ability to make the unseen visible and to elevate the ordinary.

In this striking exhibition, Geene shares her perspective of nature in The Hague. She explores the natural surroundings of the museum, from its monumental garden to the nearby Scheveningen coastline: locations that are indispensable to her work and life, as they were to the Mesdags.

While Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten captured Scheveningen in oils or watercolour, Geene brings a contemporary, investigative perspective to her depictions of the beach.

Anne Geene constantly plays with the human urge to create order, bending the natural elements to her will; from the shells and mussels she found on Scheveningen beach to the magnolia leaves from the museum garden.

‘‘My work brings structure to the apparent chaos of nature. Every detail tells a story, whether it’s a blade of grass, a leaf or a shell. It’s comes down to how you look at it."

Her at times seemingly random combinations, such as cabbage preserved in formalin next to painted still lifes from the museum collection, create a visual dialogue that invites viewers to reflect on the things that are commonly overlooked.

Semi-scientific

Anne Geene has boundless curiosity for the world of plants, animals and objects. She collects, orders and takes photographs. She studies and documents her material, explores patterns and phenomena, and searches for information and images in relevant literature before incorporating her findings into photographic works and installations.

That which is objectively captured by the camera forms the foundations of Geene’s work. She seeks visual likenesses, patterns and contrasts, which she turns into semi-scientific compositions. By collecting and ordering objects from nature, Geene comments somewhat ironically on the human pursuit of knowledge and order, which is characteristic of the natural sciences.

About Anne Geene

Anne Geene (1983, Breda) lives and works in The Hague. She studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and obtained her Master’s in Photographic Studies from Leiden University. Geene has won a number of prestigious awards, including de Volkskrant Visual Art Award in 2018. Her work has been acquired for collections of museums including the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller Museum.