Maren Boedeker is an artist and educator currently based in Toronto. She earned an MA in Fine Arts and Art Education from the Academy of Fine Arts Münster, Germany.
She received the Liguria, Italy, artist-in-residence-award from AFA Münster. Maren Boedeker was also awarded first place in the exhibition “Art for Europe”, curated by the European Community in Brussels, Belgium. Following her transition from Germany to Canada, she was selected for AKIN Studio Program artist residencies at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2019), Collision Gallery at Commerce Court Toronto (2020) and at Auto BLDG (2022 and 2023).
Various exhibitions have shown her work in both Canada and Europe. These include Cultural Centre Hasselt; Belgium, European Community Brussels, Belgium; Museum Abtei Liesborn, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; Collision Gallery, Toronto; Ontario Society of Artists, Toronto.
Her work is held in private, public, and corporate collections in Europe and Canada.
About:
Maren Boedeker’s paintings simultaneously convey the process of their genesis, revealing an authentic multi-layered conversation. The source of inspiration is life itself (nature, landscapes, atmospheres, colours, sounds, textures, rhythms) and the experience of the painting process. The paintings show a fascinating realm of in-betweenness, seem to be always in motion, changing, ageing, transforming, and renewing like processes of life and time.
Maren creates a complex abstract visual language of shapes, colours, marks and gestures using a broad spectrum of unconventional tools, media, and experimental techniques. She balances an intuitive, searching approach, always open to the unexpected and unknown, with an awareness of the insights and answers emerging from the canvas. Her paintings have a temporal structure. Layers build up over days, sometimes weeks and months, creating a unique depth and allowing insight into what happened before. These lively constructs do not deliver a detailed depiction of visual reality. They capture aspects of physical experience, interlacing fragments of memory and perception, but they are more than that.
“Maren Boedeker’s paintings remind us of the essential human expressions related to early cave art. Their rudimentary and open forms are equally precise and condensed, reaching an often-unparalleled density to a complexity legible by anyone willing to engage.“ (Dr. Gudrun Wessing, art historian). It is up to the viewer to be involved in the ongoing process of deciphering and understanding.