Hellen van Meene: The Dissolve | Yancey Richardson Gallery
Hellen van Meene, Untitled #501, 2017, Archival pigment print, 16 x 16 inches, Edition of 10
Written by Makenna Karas
Photo Edited by Kelly Woodyard
The winding corridors that take one from girlhood to womanhood are labyrinthian. The years one spends navigating them are akin to walking through a fun house, where suddenly, your perceptions and experiences of the world stretch and morph around you. It is the haunting, disorienting nature of those years that renowned Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene reveals with “The Dissolve,” an exhibition centered around exploring the psychological landscape of young women as they balance on the brink of adulthood. The show will be displayed at The Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City and run through March 30th.
Hellen van Meene, Untitled #525, 2020, Archival pigment print, 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches, Edition of 10
Through her mastery of light, van Meene’s images beautifully resemble old-world paintings, adding layers that provide visual and ideological depth.. It is fitting that the images contain elements of antiquity, for they grapple with issues that are just as aged. The fetishization of innocence stands at the forefront of those issues. “Untitled #525” confronts this elusive idea of innocence by focusing on a young woman in a wedding dress that has been lit on fire. Unphased, she stands in the center, clutching a bouquet containing only the remnants of flowers. The burning hem of the white wedding dress and the morbid bouquet deny the viewer the idealistic, expected picture of purity, offering a raw representation of what it feels like to grow up. .
Hellen van Meene, Untitled #534, 2021, Archival pigment print, 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches, Edition of 10
Fire appears again in “Untitled #534”, where a young woman stands next to a clothesline of burning shirts. One shirt is partially charred and partially untouched by the flames, hanging as the perfect symbol of the adolescent girl who stands mischievously next to it. Much like the shirt, she burns in a liminal space between two states, untouched and touched, girlhood and womanhood. Pieces of cloth fall away and burn to the ground while the young woman stands with her hands behind her back, wearing a slight smirk across her face. Much like with the aforementioned image, there is an element of wrongness in the fire, of doing something you are not supposed to, that van Meene allows the women to explore fully.
Hellen van Meene, Untitled #561, 2023, Archival pigment print, 16 x 16 inches, Edition of 10
“Untitled #561” and “Untitled #562” further expose the chaos and confusion that enshrouds the liminal years of late adolescence through a juxtaposition. The former depicts a wedding scene of a young woman in white, standing in a white room, cutting through her white cake—but with a saw. The saw contradicts the docility the image would otherwise embody, severing the sweetness stereotypically attributed to a young bride. When put in communication with “Untitled #562”, the image becomes all the more revealing. Shot in the same room with the same model, the latter image portrays the woman, no longer dressed in white but pink, messily grinding meat. The white tablecloth and the entire room are now noticeably stained red. When placed side by side, the two reveal the harrowing transition from childhood to adulthood that the exhibition illustrates with haunting precision.
Hellen van Meene, Untitled #562, 2023, Archival pigment print, 16 x 16 inches, Edition of 10
