Maen Florin

Employing sculpture as a medium, Maen Florin creates her fascinating and mysterious universe as a projection of artist’s experience and her vision of the fundamental principles of the outer world. The artist perceives the world as a sophisticated vital system, emerging, existing, and growing in the interconnection between the nature and human beings.

Since mid - 1980^th, she develops her artistic practice in implementing different materials – plaster, bronze, polyester, textiles. From 2015 Maen Florin focuses on creating works in ceramic. While working with other mediums, she employed clay more as an intermediate material and a mean for modelling. “Today, clay is the final material, much more direct and spontaneous. And thanks to my developed process of glazing, applied in transparent layers, an extra dimension opens up, with more expression, more depth, leading to more complete sculptures,” explains the artist.

Following her research on the psychological aspects of human nature and the mystery of human’s conscience, the artist started working on series of humans’ heads realized in ceramic and painted with glaze. An emotional series represent a gallery of archetypes, universal characters in different formats – from a life-size to a large-scale sculpture. Human’s face is a unique part of the body which reflects personality, character, and even an imprint of an entire life which the artist visualizes through mimics, mood, and emotions of her “Heads”. 

“On the Wall “series is very close by its meanings to the “Heads” series. It is also dedicated to the hidden space of personal emotions, feelings, and sensations. This series represents a collection of busts with wall mounting, created as a combination of expressive ceramic heads and with ready-made mannequin torsos.

The world of Maen Florin’s personages forms a symbolic theater where human drama or human comedy unfolds. The artist expresses through the clay’s shape and glaze paint the integrity of the internal world masked by the faces. This world is filled with thoughts and emotions, hopes and fears, joy, and melancholy. 

Recently, in 2020, she started a new chapter in the story of her creations turning from human’s appearance and character to the mystical sources of nature which has a female soul and spirit. Continuing to work with ceramic and glaze, Maen Florin creates a universe which is blossoming, growing, existing in the prosses of reproduction and fruition. Colorful trees, fruits, corals, inhabitants of the undersea world are surrealistic and phantasmagorical, poetic, and enigmatic. The artist speaks about the beauty and the mystery as a manifestation of the natures’ incarnations.  “Unlike the sculptures I’ve made in recent years, which have focused exclusively on male faces, the forms of these sculptures are feminine and protective, symbolizing the nourishing force of nature, the maternal force of the sea,” the artist says.

Born in Kleine-Brogel (BE) in 1954, Maen Florin lives and works in Schelderode near Ghent (BE). She studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Antwerp and at Sint Lucas Hogeschool in Ghent.

Selected solo exhibitions include among others:
Strange Paradise - ISELP Bruxelles (BE), 2023; Out of Paradise - Cultural House, Merelbeke (BE), 2022; Luxembourg Art Week - gallery Nadja Vilenne, 2021; Playing at being Human, Museum Hof van Busleyden - De Garage - Sint-Janskerk, Mechelen (BE), 2022; Illusion, Park Hof Ter Beuken, Lokeren (BE), 2018;
Solo Arco Madrid, Madrid (ES), 2018; Duo Vienna Contemporary, Vienna (AT); Black, Galerie Light Cube, Ronse (BE), 2017; Sculptures, Inbox, M HKA, Antwerp (BE), 2017; Sculptures, Pastorie, Munte (BE), 2017; Galerie EL, Welle (DE), 2017; Galerie Nadja Vilenne, Liège (BE), 2017; Commedia, Art House, Harelbeke (BE), 2016.

Selected group exhibitions include among others:
PACIFIC / Commedia - Le Voyage à Nantes (FR), 2023; Strange Company, DISKUS, Aalst (BE), 2023; Passing Landscape - De Egelantier, Otegem (BE), 2023; Teen Spirit, BPS22, Charleroi (BE), 2022; Fundamental occurrences, Galerie Nosbaum Reding, Brussels (BE), 2022; The hidden garden of delight, Over Grenzen, KFA22, Kunstenfestival Aardenburg (NL), 2022; Verbinding (verbroken) / (dis) Connected, Triënnale UPC Duffel (BE), 2022; Par Enchantement, Biënnale Miroirs IV, Parc d'Enghien (BE), 2022; The Fair/Luxembourg Art Week, Luxemburg, 2021; Beaufort Triennial 2021; A tree is more than it says, De Egelantier, Otegem (BE), 2021; LET'S GET OUT - Art Festival, Bachte-Maria-Leerne; L’heure Bleue (Part II), +1 PLUS-ONE Gallery, Antwerp (BE), 2020; On My Way, Maen Florin / Filip Vervaet / Jenny Brosinski, +1 PLUS-ONE Gallery, Antwerp (BE), 2019; Who are you?, La Maison des Arts, Schaarbeek, 2019; Keramis / Center of Ceramics, La Louvière, 2019; On the Road, Nadja Villenne Gallery, Liège, 2021; Wunderkammer, Museum Hof van Busleyden, Mechelen (BE), 2018.