On 15 February 2025 Huis Marseille will open Presence, the first institutional solo exhibition devoted to work by the Dutch artist Ilona Plaum. The museum and Plaum herself are putting on a large show: forty works will be on display, some from Huis Marseille’s own collection, some from existing work, and some is new work that was created especially for the exhibition.
In Presence Plaum invites viewers to descend into her poetic universe, in which our perception is undermined. Only when you doubt your senses do you encounter a deeper, indisputable truth: doubt makes us more closely observe and experience our own existence.
Plaum’s 3D maquettes, painted scenes, and photographic flat surfaces are linked by illusions. In these illusions she observes the rules of paradox: she switches between surface and depth perception, and turns backgrounds into foregrounds; shadows become tangible and seem to move. In so doing Plaum transports the viewer from invented spaces to real ones, and vice versa. The small imperfections that she intentionally leaves visible in the work make it clear that the elements of these illusions were created by hand. This momentarily brings the viewer back to the starting point of the work: the moment the artist actually made it.
Huis Marseille as part of Presence
In this exhibition Plaum is presenting her work in collaboration with the specific atmosphere and functions of the spaces in Huis Marseille. She links her work with the authentic interior of the two canalside houses by means of specially designed scenography, including wallpaper, ‘pillars’, paper shadows, and a spatial construction of the setting in her studio. In this way a number of the galleries in Huis Marseille are given an extra dimension, as part and parcel of her work.
Ilona Plaum
Ilona Plaum (1970, Amsterdam) studied Goldsmithing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, going on to develop as an autonomous artist. Besides the Huis Marseille collection, her work has been acquired for the Ahold corporate collection, UMC Utrecht, NN Group, and private collections in the Netherlands and abroad. Plaum is represented by galerie dudokdegroot.
Collection
Huis Marseille has followed Ilona Plaum’s work for many years. In 2012, 2013, 2017 and 2019 works by Plaum were acquired for the museum collection, and her work was exhibited in The rediscovery of the world (2013) and Pictures from Another Wall. The Huis Marseille Collection on Show in De Pont (2020).
Catalogue
An eponymous catalogue of Ilona Plaum’s work will be published by Jap Sam Books in the spring of 2025. Its authors are Hans den Hartog Jager and Ilona Plaum herself. It was designed by Meeusontwerp. Its publication was assisted by subsidies from the Mondriaan Fonds, the Stichting Jaap Harten Fonds, the Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, and crowdfunding by Voordekunst.