Van Eeden’s practice is drawing, of which he has been creating at least one a day over the last fifteen years comprising a body of over 4,000 works. Executed in a soft rich black nero pencil with extraordinary skill and an almost unfathomable diversity of images, his basic principle is to draw only what has come into being before his birth, the 22 November 1965, which gives his work a nostalgic yet intangible quality. He draws from found photographs, and in some series attaches half real/half imaginary characters to the subjects of the drawings as they pass through invented lives.
For Draíocht Van Eeden will present a new series of work called, The Archaeologist, The Travels of Oswald Sollmann, a cycle of drawings. It is a cycle featuring a semi-fictitious archeologist, who first travels to Berlin, to work on or investigate the Pergamon altar, after which his research leads him to Morocco, Iraq, Iran, The Netherlands, Egypt, Ireland, Spain and Germany. Part of this series originated in a public art commission Eeden is carrying out for an apartment building in The Hague. Some of the locations mentioned above are birthplaces of the people who live in this apartment building in which he lived himself as a child.
After showing in Draíocht the exhibition will then travel to Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos (CAB) in Spain. A brochure is being produced by both venues to accompany the exhibition.
Marcel van Eeden is a hugely prolific Dutch artist who in 2004/5/6 has had several major museum and gallery shows in Europe, including the Berlin Biennale (2006), Kunstverein Hannover (2006), Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdof, Switzerland (2004) Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, (2003) and Gem Museum Voor Actuele Kunst, The Hague (2003). He is represented by galleries in The Hague, Munich and Toronto.