You Can’t Cry When Your Head Is Underwater
在水里你哭不出來

You Can’t Cry When Your Head Is Underwater
在水里你哭不出來

Marlene Steyn
馬琳·絲丹

5th October – 12th November
 2016 (PV: 4th October 6 – 9 PM)
2016年10月5日 －11月12日（開幕：10月4日晚6-9點）

Lychee One Gallery/荔枝一號畫廊
38-50 Pritchards road, London E2 9BJ

Lychee One Gallery is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of The South African artist Marlene Steyn You Can’t Cry When Your Head Is Underwater. Often been compared with the mysterious master painter Bosch, her work is distinguished by an intense expenditure of imagination that describes a world astray from the gravity of common sense.This unbounded expenditure is often made literal by outgrowths from the canvas sand the delirium encased within the formation of images. Eyes are scattered everywhere like seeds. We are being asked to see double then triple in ways that might invite the redistribution of our own faculty of seeing. Not only that but with eyes of monsters, seducers, enchanters and mystics. It is all simply mixed up and mixed up in ways that create foam of excess. These created worlds are worlds that are quite apart, not just in the sense of dream or fantasy, but with an invitation to see too much. So what is this too much in the world of Marlene Steyn? Is it simply a remote zone inhabited by derangement (poetic and otherwise), is it a vision of a future forever stalling in the half light of reality or is it the translations of the yet to come promised by aesthetic bliss? Indeed if a show should be able to present such things that it must do so as eruption.

Marlene Steyn was born in 1989 in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2014 from the Royal College of Art in London, UK, specialising in painting. Prior to this, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, in 2011. Since 2014, Marlene Steyn has presented four critically acclaimed solo exhibitions: How Cannibals Cuddle at Art Cabin in London, in 2014; Mad Love at Lychee One in London, 2015; The End is Located Underneath Her Third Armpit (if the muscle is flexed) in Cape Town, South Africa, 2015. Your Skin Is Not The Best Hiding Place, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, 2016.

Notable group exhibitions include: Dreamtime: New Surrealism (2013) at Mirus Gallery in San Francisco, USA; Bloomberg New Contemporaries, first presented at Spike Island in Bristol in 2013 and again in 2014 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Also in 2014, Steyn’s work was selected for the Saatchi New Sensations 2014 exhibition at Victoria Housein Bloomsbury, London; Inoperative Mythology at Blyth Gallery, Imperial Collegein London and The Luminous Language at The Assembly Rooms in London. In 2015, Steyn completed a residency at Atelier 35 in Bucharest, Romania, where she presented work in the collaborative exhibition, His Sprinkled Blood Served To Fructify Three Golden Apples. That same year, Steyn received the prestigious Vermont Studio Fellowship, and her work was included in La Piscine at Espace Croix Baragnon in Toulouse, France. Recent group exhibitions include All She Ever Wanted To Be at Galleria M in Kolkata, India (2015); LUSH at SMAC Galleryin Stellenbosch, South Africa (2015); Faces & Other Scenarios, a two person show at Galerie d’Ys in Brussels, Belgium (2016); Inside Out at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, UK and Across the Divide at Rosenfeld Porcini, London, both in 2016. She has just achieved a collaborative residency with Indianproduct designer Avantika Agarwal at the Shoonya Space – Centre for Art and Somatic Practices in Bangalore, India.

More information
Marlene Steyn: marlenesteyn.tumblr.com
Lychee One Gallery: www.lycheeone.com

荔枝一號畫廊很榮幸地為您呈現南非藝術家馬琳·絲丹的第二個個展。經常被拿來和15世紀尼德蘭繪畫大師包西做對比，馬琳天馬行空的想像力，從不受我們這個世界的重力所限制。這樣的無拘無束的氣場轉化到畫布上並滋生出光怪陸離的幻想。觀眾的目光好像播種一樣，被要求看兩遍，看三遍，直到重新調整觀看的能力。怪物，引誘者，魔法師，神秘主義者，荒誕離奇地纏繞在一起。這個世界和我們的不同，不只是夢境或幻想，還是一份讓觀眾體驗無窮多的邀請。在馬琳的世界裡，無窮多是什麼？也許是某個遙遠卻詩意的神秘地帶，或是永遠失速的混沌未來，還是來自遠方極樂世界的召喚？藝術家以不可思議的爆發力向我們呈現了她的精神世界。

馬琳·絲丹，1989年出生於南非開普敦，她在2014年得到了倫敦皇家藝術學院的油畫碩士學位。在此之前，她在南非Stellenbosch藝術學院得到本科學位。自2014年以來，馬琳舉辦了四次備受好評的個展：2014年倫敦Cabin畫廊的《食人族是如何擁抱的》；2015倫敦荔枝一號畫廊的《瘋狂的愛》；南非開普敦畫廊《結局就在她第三個胳肢窩下》。2016年她在南非開普敦SMAC畫廊舉辦的《你的皮囊不是最好的躲藏地》展示了她最新創作的大型繪畫和雕塑裝置。

她參加過的群展主要包括： 2013在舊金山Mirus畫廊的《夢想時間：新超現實》; 2013，2014年先後在布里斯託的Spike Island，倫敦ICA 美術館舉行的《布倫伯格新當代藝術》。2014年馬琳的作品入選倫敦Victoria House 舉辦的《薩奇新感覺》，英國帝國理工學院Blyth畫廊的《失效神話》,和在The Assembly Rooms的展覽《光輝的語言》。2015年, 馬琳完成了在羅馬尼亞Bucharest的Atelier 35駐留項目並舉辦雙人展《His Sprinkled Blood Served To Fructify Three Golden Apples》。同年，馬琳很榮幸地被授予Vermont工作室獎學金，她的作品在法國圖魯斯的展覽《La Piscine at Espace Croix Baragnon》中展出。最近的群展包括在印度的Galleria M畫廊的All she ever wanted to be 她想變成的一切（2016）; SMAC畫廊在南非Stellenbosch分畫廊的群展LUSH（豐盛）（2015）; 比利時布魯塞爾Galeried’Ys畫廊的雙人展《面孔和其他劇本 （2016）》; 英國曼徹斯特Castlefield畫廊的群展《腦筋急轉彎（2016）》，以及倫敦的Rosenfeld Porcini畫廊的《越界（2016）》就在不久之前她剛在Shoonya Space – Bangalore的SomaticPractices藝術中心完成了和印度產品設計師Avantika Agarwal合作的駐留項目。在倫敦的荔枝一號第二個個展之後，她將會為明年在奧地利的展覽創作新的作品。