Elusive Paradise

Introduction

ABOUT THE WORK

Distorted Nature

It is immediately apparent that Isabelle Menin’s artistic background is in painting. Her bright colours and invigorating, fanciful manipulation of texture and materiality have enthralled the art community. Menin’s works are like vortexes, pulling viewers in deeper and deeper.

Menin describes her compositions as “Inland photographs and disordered landscapes”, as a means of drawing parallels between the complexity of the human character and that of nature. The inspiration for her work is drawn in part from Peter Paul Rubens and the so-called “Flemish Primitives”, an artistic circle prominent in the 15th and 16th Centuries that included Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling and Rogier van der Weyden. Menin’s link to the Flemish masters can be seen in her endeavour to create a distinctive form of reality inside fictional worlds.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

After completing a degree at the Brussels School of Graphic Research, Menin devoted herself to painting and illustration. Multiple exhibitions in Belgium soon followed. After spending a decade working with classical techniques, however, the artist was drawn to the compelling challenges of digital art. Menin finds her subjects in nature, and flowers are a constant theme in her compositions.

What sets Menin apart from her peers is her combination of beautiful, organic forms with a modern, technical method of representation. She manipulates texture and colour, photographing individual flowers, scanning other fragments of nature, and bringing them together in individual compositions. Her works have already appeared in Paris’s world famous Louvre museum, as part of the exhibition “Fotofever”.

“Going digital allowed me to push back my limits, to find a much wider sphere of activity where things tied up fluidly and were reversible.”

Hannah Hör

Bio

1961	Born in Brussels, Belgium
	Studied Art at the School of Graphic Research in Brussels
	Lives and works in Brussels

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

2017	Garden on Orchard, Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York, USA
2017	Seattle Art Fair, Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York, USA
2017	Gothic Show, Lehman College Art Gallery, New York, USA
2016	Karen Margolis and Isabelle Menin, Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York, USA
2016	Round it up!, Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York, USA
2016	Art Market San Francisco, San Francisco, USA
2016	Total Flora, Galerie Christine Knauber, Berlin, Germany

Group Exhibitions

2016	Belgium Modern Art Exhibition, Hongqiao Museum, Shanghai, China
2016	OFF Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium
2016	Kunstraï, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2016	MIA Fair, Milano, Italy
2016	Setup Contemporary Art Fair, Bologna, Italy
2016	Fotofever - Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France
2016	The Perception of Beauty - Group show, Sophie Marée Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands
2016	Femmes de Belgique - Group Show, Sophie Marée Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands
2016	FLORA, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mons, Belgium
2013	The Perception of Beauty, Sophie Marée Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands
2013	Les Femmes de Belgique, Sophie Marée Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands
2011	Belgium Modern Art Exhibition, Hongqiao Museum, Shanghai, China
2010	250/3, Galerie Antonio Nardone, Brussels, Belgium
1999	FLORA, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mons, Belgium