ELEMENTS is a collaboration between Jenny Owens, Nathalie Brans and Santiago Vélez, 3 artists that have been invited by PontArte in Maastricht to work together and look for overlap
and similarities in their artistic practice.

water|fire|earth|air

have been the starting points for each artist for years.
ELEMENTS can be seen from May 25th until june 30th at PontArte in Maastricht

About the artists:

Artist statement by Jenny Owens

My artistic practice explores how the acts of seeing, remembering, dreaming and narrating are connected and the role of the intangible in these processes.

I build non-linear stories through fragmentation and layers.

I register images of reality with special framing, montage and temporality devices that distort their perception to allow new meanings to filter through them. I’m interested in the constructive nature of images, the journeys they go on and what lies in the spaces in between them.

Artist statement by Nathalie Brans

If all of space could fit in a shoebox, then how big would the world be? And how big would I be?

Scale plays an important role in my work. My main sources of inspiration are the heavenly bodies; how we experience them and the connections between them, for example how the Moon orbits Earth and how Earth and the Moon together in turn orbit the Sun. They influence one another and together keep the system in balance.

I read about astronomy, study the heavens with my telescope and take photos of the sun and moon. To me photography is a way to collect images and I am mainly interested in analogue and lensless photography. The manual process involved with these techniques pleases me. Working by hand means feeling the materials and having an intimate relation with them.

I prefer working with paper and fabric, foldable and soft materials that are easily worked by hand and share a tactile, haptic, quality. I create tapestries, artist books, collages and, occasionally, performances. The outcome constists of conceptual works in which time is established in a both miniscule and majestic manner.

Statement by Santiago Vélez

Water is such a magical and mysterious element that in its essence contains all forms of life. Not surprisingly, the great space missions that humanity undertakes today are dedicated to its search in interstellar space. Here on Earth, there is an area that houses 75% of the entire planet’s fresh water and therefore has been declared a place of Peace and Science in order to protect and study it seeking its maximum conservation.
Antarctica is a continent where water is present in all its magnitude and states. It is the absolute protagonist of everything that is seen and lived there. Its presence is so overwhelming that being there means wanting to capture water in every possible way. This set of works arises from the experience of being twice in that white continent.