Elsemarijn Bruys*

From 28 September, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will be presenting a new installation by Rotterdam-based artist Elsemarijn Bruys, created especially for our museum. The work, entitled Minimal Art on Acid, is an immersive experience that challenges your perspective and stimulates your senses. Known for her large-scale installations at festivals and in theatres, Bruys will transform the museum’s attic space into a dizzying world of mirrored objects and moving elements. Minimal Art on Acid is Bruys’ first solo museum presentation.

In her new work Minimal Art on Acid, Elsemarijn Bruys takes her cue from minimal art, an art movement from the 1960s in which subtle objects and small interventions in a space make you aware of your surroundings and invite you to look at them in a new way. Bruys, however, goes a step further than traditional minimal art, transforming the attic space at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam with a grand gesture rather than a subtle intervention. The museum’s monumental eighteenth-century wooden roof structure plays a central role in her design. The lines of the roof, the pillars and the depth of the space inspired Bruys to create an installation in which moving mirrors repeat and distort the space. Visitors see not only their own reflection but also that of others, thereby themselves becoming part of the installation and the space.

First solo museum presentation

Elsemarijn Bruys often exhibits at festivals, where the experience of her artworks takes centre stage. Her preferred materials are air and mirrors, which she has used to establish her own position in the contemporary art world. Her exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam is her first solo museum presentation and is curated by Sanneke Huisman.

About Elsemarijn Bruys

Elsemarijn Bruys (1989, the Netherlands) is a visual artist with a deep curiosity about sensory perception. In her versatile practice she creates both sculptures and architectural interventions, always with a focus on spatial experience.

Bruys studied Fashion Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts, where her graduation project included an in-depth study of the puffer jacket – a fashion item that adds volume to the body. This interest in volume, the interaction between body and space and the relationship between people has been at the heart of her work since graduating. Since then, she has evolved into an artist of immersive spatial installations using mirrors, mirrored objects, inflatables and moving elements.

Elsemarijn Bruys, photo by Lisa Schamle

Elsemarijn Bruys and the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam

In recent years, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam has organised several successful exhibitions in which the interaction between artwork and audience dictates the way the work is experienced. The exhibitions Planetary Chapel by Levi van Veluw and Rothko & I, in which an almost mystical experience of the artwork was stimulated, received a great deal of attention. Zoro Feigl’s solo exhibition Sun-Spark Spraying  and the group exhibition Ekstasis were also major public successes.

Elsemarijn Bruys’ solo presentation builds on this series of exhibitions. The museum recognises in Bruys’ work and practice a contemporary affinity with the art of the 1960s and 1970s, which also focused on a multi-sensory experience of art through abstraction.