Maria Roosen

Over time, glass has become Maria Roosen’s recognised medium, but it wasn’t always so. Graduating from the rigorous and ambitious Moller Instituut Tilburg in 1981, she chose to go onto the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Arnhem, where a multidisciplinary approach allowed students to direct themselves towards and within subject areas, rather than being defined by a single one. Continuing the work that she had developed at Tilburg, and allowing herself the time to find her feet, Roosen began by making linocuts; eventually, turning to sculpture, she found that the department, which had been located in a wonderful Rietveld-designed building, had been closed to reduce costs. Undeterred, and perhaps because of the lack of instruction or direction, she established a studio and began making ambitious sculptures in wood, foam and textiles; part readymade, part constructivist, something about the body. The reliefs are called Madonnas (1983), and from the same year, there is a Flying Nun, a very flexible, feminine sculpture in black cloth and mirror set on eighty tiny wheels, so she could move at the slightest push. The first work in glass, untitled from 1986, was created by shaping molten fusing glass over a form to make a shell which, when assembled face-to-face with another, made a closed vessel/mussel; suspended in a net/web, it was a fishy catch or a spider’s nascent brood.

Texts by Maria Rossen and Clare Lilley