Ilse d hollander biography of abraham

Ilse D’Hollander
Victoria Miro
7 November - 21 December, 2018
Review by Claire Phillips

Drifting across the porous outlines of misted horizons, open fields and canals, Ilse D’Hollander’s paintings are like the remnants of dreams as they begin to dwindle in the morning sun.

Spread through the galleries of Victoria Miro’s Mayfair outpost, though, these paintings are perilously intertwined with D’Hollander and her story of tragedy and woe.

Born in a small village in the Flemish lowlands between Antwerp and Ghent, D’Hollander came of age in the 1980s at a time when most critics and teachers were peddling the death of painting.

D’Hollander continued with her education and made a body of work anchored in the natural world, imbued with a sensual visual language that is rooted in her experience of the rolling Flemish countryside. The results are a refreshing antidote to the moneymaking machines we’ve come to know as Zombie Formalists.

In contrast, D’Hollander’s paintings capture an