Based on a True Story

Artist Esther Tielemans (born 1976) has been making waves again with her unique painting objects. Her work has become increasingly abstract over the years and emphatically focuses on the surface and the act of painting itself. The colors, shapes, sheen, and reflections of her panels are captivating. “I explore the foundations of painting; the suggestion of reality, of a third dimension within a flat frame.”

For Esther Tielemans, nature is a muse, a model she paints based on her personal ideas, thoughts, and memories, but also with references to the long tradition of painting. In her installation Based on a True Story, the artist presents an ensemble of eight paintings and three freestanding monochrome panels, constructed as a landscape she shares with us.

Tielemans’ works seem to become more abstract over the years and increasingly concerned with painting itself. To understand the foundations of the medium, she explores the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture, between the painting and its frame. Yet, Tielemans isn’t concerned with reducing the painting to form, line, and color. She uses her memory and intuition, colors and brushstrokes, to recall what she experienced in a landscape.

Based on a True Story demonstrates that abstraction stems from a real experience. An experience that can no longer be fully recalled, but is only stored in fragments in the memory. Like apparent déjà vu, for example, of cloudy skies or ripples on the surface of water; pleasant, yet also melancholic sensations.

Booklet Based on a True Story

A booklet with 16 luxury postcards of Tielemans’ work and a short introduction to her art by Rudi Fuchs will be published to accompany the exhibition. It will soon be available in the museum shop.
The booklet was created in partnership with the AkzoNobel Art Foundation.

Esther Tielemans

Esther Tielemans has won, among other awards, the Royal Award for Painting and the Wolvecamp Prize. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at venues including Singer Laren, Dordrechts Museum, Gem, The Hague, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, and at Art Basel. Her work is held in numerous museum and corporate collections. In 2019, Esther Tielemans was artist-in-residence at ISCP New York.