Hellen van Meene
The Dissolve
February 22 – March 30, 2024
Dutch artist Hellen van Meene is best known for her carefully staged portraits of adolescent girls, revealing the psychological tension and ambiguity of this transitional stage of life. Through her particular use of form and natural light, it is clear to see the influence of her Dutch predecessors, such as Johannes Vermeer.
Although based in reality, van Meene’s portraits have a distinctly detached and otherworldly quality to them. Her subjects often appear immersed in their own thoughts, their gaze fixed upon something out of the frame, or their eyes closed. The artist aims to produce a slowing down effect with her photographs, as she captures the moment between girlhood and womanhood, which is gone all too quickly. This timeless quality extends to the photographs themselves, which appear both contemporary and entirely from another era.
For a recent series, van Meene enhanced this feeling of temporal and physical detachment by moving her portraits into the realm of fantasy. Figures without faces, sheaths of hair concealing their identity, and girls hovering above the ground confront the viewer, leaving the method and intent behind each portrait deliberately ambiguous.
Born in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, in 1972, Hellen van Meene lives and works in Heiloo, The Netherlands. She was the 2016 recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship, awarded to distinguished people in the areas of the fine art of photography and science.
Van Meene’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Guggenheim Museum, New York; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Folkwang Museum, Essen; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; The Photographer’s Gallery, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; and The Art Institute of Chicago. Van Meene’s work is held in the collections of major museums worldwide including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York; MoCA Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Van Meene is the subject of five artist monographs, including Hellen van Meene: The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Aperture, 2015); Hellen van Meene: Japan Series (The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and De Hallen, Haarlem, the Netherlands, 2002); Hellen van Meene: Portraits (Aperture, 2004); Hellen van Meene: New Work (Schirmer/Mosel, 2006); and Hellen van Meene: tout va disparaître (Schirmer/Mosel, 2009).
September 8 – December 2, 2018
Hellen van Meene: And everything goes on when you die
How can it be that the world keeps turning, the sun shines on and the flowers bloom – that, in short, it can be a beautiful day – when someone you love has just died? How is it possible that between your tears, and to your own amazement, you can suddenly laugh again, and enjoy making plans for the future, or creating things, while you are still paralyzed by grief? How can the world seem to be exactly the same when your own life has been altered so profoundly? These unfathomable connections between death, mourning, and renewed vitality inspired Hellen van Meene to create her newest work, entitled And everything goes on when you die.
The RPS Awards, established in 1878, are the longest running and most prestigious photography awards in the world. They recognize exceptional photographers, scientists, curators, educators.
| Portrait (s) 4th Season Under the Sun Between the last fantasies of childhood and the first concerns of the adult world, puberty is a delicate period of physical and psychological transformations. The Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene has for many years produced portraits of teenagers. The gracefully choreographed gestures and glances are tinged with both apprehension and melancholy. |
VISAGES / portraits europeens
A retrospective steeped in the history of European portraiture featuring 24 photographers such as Anton Corbijn, Beat Struli, and Juergen Teller.
Works by Helen van Meene are included in this show curated by Frits Gierstberg currently showing at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. FACES NOW: European Portrait Photography since 1990 brings together some of the best examples of modern portrait photography from over 30 of the top artists working today including Thomas Struth, Juergen Teller, and Tina Barney. The show runs through May 17th, 2015. Read more.
A two-person exhibition, Old Dreams, New Dreams, featuring the work of Dutch photographers Ata Kando and Hellen van Meene, is currently on display at Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen, the Netherlands, through November 1. Work by van Meene also is included in the group show, de herontdekking van de wereld (the rediscovery of the world), at the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, through December 8.
Works by Andrew Moore and Hellen van Meene are featured in the upcoming exhibition, An Orchestrated Vision: The Theater of Contemporary Photography, on display at the St. Louis Art Museum from February 19 – May 13. The museum's photographic survey includes Moore, van Meene, Edward Burtynsky, Gregory Crewdson, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Taryn Simon, Thomas Struth, and Larry Sultan, among many others.
Hellen van Meene's work Untitled #301, from the Pool of Tears series, has been acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
The artist's photographic portraits are in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, SF MOMA, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among many others.
Gallery artists Mitch Epstein, David Hilliard, Kenneth Josephson, Laura Letinsky and Hellen van Meene are all included in Conversations: Photography from the Bank of America Collection, a group exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, on display through June 19, 2011. The exhibition also features works by Eugène Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Cindy Sherman, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Vik Muniz, and Richard Misrach, among others.
Foto Kunst Stadforum in Innsbruck, Austria is exhibiting tout va disparaître, a traveling solo show of works by Hellen van Meene, open through June 2, 2010. Originally exhibited at Yancey Richardson Gallery, tout va disparaître comprises a selection of work made in New York City, the American South, Russia, and the Netherlands between 2007 and 2009.
In conjunction with the 2010 Hollywood awards season, the New York Times Magazine commissioned Hellen van Meene for a portrait portfolio of five starlets from award nominated films. The Secret Lives of Girls includes portraits of Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones), Abby Cornish (Bright Star), and Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria). The limited edition portfolio is available through Yancey Richardson Gallery.
Amy Elkins and Hellen van Meene are included in The Portrait: Photography as a Stage, from Mapplethorpe to Nan Goldin currently on view at the Kunsthalle Wien, Austria. The exhibition also includes Roger Ballen, Tina Barney, Valérie Belin, Clegg & Guttmann, Anton Corbijn, Rineke Dijkstra, JH Engström, Alberto Garcia-Alix, Nan Goldin, Katy Grannan, Jitka Hanzlová, Peter Hujar, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe,Thomas Ruff, and Wolfgang Tillmans among others. Curated by Peter Weiermair, the exhibition runs through October 18th, 2009.
Hellen van Meene is one of twelve contemporary Dutch photographers featured in the exhibition Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered on view through September 13, 2009 at the Museum of the City of New York. To watch a video on the exhibition narrated by the curator please click here. Her new monograph tout va paraitre has just been published by Schirmer Mosel.
Hellen Van Meene is included in a group exhibition Darkside: Photographic Desire and Sexuality Photographed, at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zürich up through November 16th 2008.
