Lonneke van der Palen’s vivid photographs bear witness to her almost mathematical sense of color and design. They often reflect still-life or a portrait showing a single figure. The images tease your imagination, and leave you guessing what it is you are actually seeing and what its underlying importance is. In fact, a single image actually tells an entire narrative.
Van der Palen plays with people’s experience: recognizable elements and visual clichés are combined in such a way that onlookers are continually thrown off balance. The representation of an everyday object that is central to a photo is often so aesthetic – almost theatrical – that it summons up entirely contrasting associations and meanings.
