SHARON VAN DEN BERG | Dormitorios | MELANIE’S OFFICE
March 17 - April 19, 2024
I make paintings, drawings, texts and objects, which I sometimes combine. The common thread in my work is memory; either memories from my childhood, incorporating events that have happened, old photos or something surreal I noticed while cycling – they can all lead to a piece of work. Since two years I have been working on the series Dormitorios (Bedrooms); small oil-painted panels of different sizes I crafted myself, sometimes in combination with paper and pencil. For twenty-five years, there has been an old book in my studio with photos of bedrooms, that I bought at a flea market on Mallorca (a Spanish island). Occasionally, I would reach for it to use a detail for a painting. I never found the justification and form to use the photos in their entirety. At some point, apparently, the time was right, and I found a way to turn them into paintings; the book had become a part of me and my memory. In this still-growing series, my focus is explicitly on painting, and I always look for something that surprises me in it; it is never a literal representation of the photo.
Sharon van den Berg was born in 1969 in The Hague, The Netherlands. She studied at the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She held residencies in Athens and Spain. Van den berg exhibited at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, had a solo show at Museum Jan and KV20 Arts & Projects and several group shows at other art spaces. In 2022 she, for the first time, showed a wall installation of her paintings, drawings, texts, and objects, at the (re)Discoveries Fair in Amsterdam. Her series Badgasten (Seaside Visitors), 263 drawings of the Polaroids her father took of all the visitors at their bohemian home in the seventies, were published in a book. A new book about her series Literal Memories is planned. Her work is in private collections in The Netherlands and other countries. Van den Berg’s studio is located in an old barn in the quiet countryside near the river Amstel.