Maria van der Togt

Lately
2024
oil on linen
110 x 90 cm
Untitled
2025
oil on linen
50 x 40 cm
Untitled
2024
oil on linen
20 x 15 cm

I am showing a series of paintings that blur the line between viewer and performer, object and frame. I am fascinated by the idea of a painting, not as a fixed image, but as a threshold: between interior and exterior, public and private, reality and its imitation. Think of that instant before your own reflection resolves in a dark shop window: you anticipate yourself, half‑imagined, hovering on the glass. That flicker of self‑identification, when time stretches and you briefly occupy two places at once, that is what I’m after.

With a background in architecture, my practice draws from stage and set design. Techniques meant to convince an audience they’re somewhere else find a different role here. Canvas becomes brick, paint becomes stucco – but everything is left unperformed, suspended in waiting. Theatrical tricks without the drama.

I zoom in on the ordinary with meticulous detail. The paintings don’t document the city; they hold it. Asking you to imagine yourself completing the scene. The scenes I build are incomplete on purpose. Stage‑like, but never staged. There is no performer, no script – just a feeling that something is always about to happen… but nothing ever quite does. Time feels held, as if it could slip, but chooses not to.


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Lately
2024
oil on linen
110 x 90 cm
Untitled
2025
oil on linen
50 x 40 cm
Untitled
2024
oil on linen
20 x 15 cm