Here and There

Unfair, Westergasfabriek
Amsterdam, NL
2025

The concept of Here and There reflects the essence of the painting process, where a constant movement occurs between 'here' and 'there'—both physically and conceptually. Each new layer in a painting pulls me, on the one hand formally 'there,' into a new dimension of the material, paint, and texture, while at the same time returning to previous layers to delve deeper into the details and textures that already exist, redefining the image. This continuous movement is not only a description of ‘the making of’, but also serves as a metaphor for a deeper, personal, introspective process.

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Framework of chance

Mural at Kate, Nieuw and Meer
Amsterdam, NL
2025

With her mural Anouk van Zwieten extends her painting practice into the public space, creating a dialogue between gesture, form, and the surrounding environment. The building, including the window sections, is integrated into the mural and used as a formal element within the composition. In this way, they gain a new meaning, as if they are part of the painting itself. This raises the question: can a flat surface also be approached as a space?

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And they lived happily ever after

Left: Not with words
Right: Where it Lands
2025

Under the title " And They Lived Happily Ever After, " this exhibition introduces contemporary painting from the perspectives of eleven artists, each presenting painting as the most powerful medium of our time.

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All the best

tegenboschvanvreden gallery
Amsterdam, NL
Solo exhibition
2022

For her first solo presentation in the gallery, Van Zwieten created a series of interrelated works in terms of theme and mood, entitled All the best. The exhibition title is also the title of one of the paintings: a human-sized canvas featuring a large, white, rectangular field in the top half. This field is reminiscent of a screen and appears to block a large portion of the image. Just below it, a drawing of dark-colored rounded and – further down the canvas – horizontal color bands seeps through. These bands sometimes blend into one another or, in turn, direct the gaze toward a green and a purple color field. In the left top corner of the paining, a tiny whiff of light blue just about enters the image. The lower portion of the paining features large, white teardrop shapes, seemingly in suspension while slowly falling down.

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What I stand on

What I Stand On, window artwork
commissioned by the Municipality of Amersfoort
Arnersfoort, NL
2022

van Zwieten was asked to make a work reflecting on one of the themes from the coalition agreement 'good life within the limits of the earth'. This addresses Amersfoort's plans to deal with the climate crisis, emphasizing the need for self-change to limit global warming. This involves altering perspectives, decision-making processes, and behaviors.
Van Zwieten, a painter raised in Amersfoort and currently residing and working in Utrecht, approaches her work intuitively and associatively. Her paintings often begin with quick sketches on the canvas, evolving into new forms and drawings. Although her work appears highly abstract, it consistently incorporates recognizable, everyday elements.

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SO WIE SO

Omstand, Space for contemporaty art
Arnhem, NL
Group Exhibition
2022

Participating Artists:
Hadassah Emmerich (NL/BE), Morgan Betz (NL/USA), Nils Bleibtrue (DE), Koen Delaere (NL), Max Frintrop (DE), Moritz Neuhof (DE), Colin Penno (DE), Machteld Rullens (NL), Joel Roters (DE), Daniel Schubert (DE), Esther Tielemans (NL), Wendy White (USA), Anouk van Zwieten (NL)
Sibylle Czichon (DE)

Curated by Lieven Hendrix and Ide Andre.

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Project Mayhem

W139 X Sunrise Tours
Amsterdam, NL
Group exhibition
2022

Participating Artists:
Frederique Jonker, Ines de Brauw, Babs Bleeker, Nazif Lopulissa, Thomas van Rijs, Danielle Hoogendoorn, Maarten Nico, Anan Striker, Killian de Jong, Allouche Wael, Marcel van den Berg, Wouter Paaijmans, Mike Moonen

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PADA Residecy

PADA Studio’s
Bareirro, Portugal
Residency may-june
2021

Solo installation, Portugal, Bareirro
Heads 183x122cm, textile paint, ink and acrylic on canvas.
Right: Untitled, 119x79cm textile paint, ink and acrylic on canvas

Photocredit: Photodocumenta

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Prospects/Concepts

Prospects/Concepts
van Nellefabriek
Rotterdam, NL
2021

In the series of paintings presented by Anouk van Zwieten at Prospects & Concepts, she continues her exploration of the repetition and magnification of details. The abstracted motif of a mountain that frequently appeared in her paintings last year seems to be replaced here by the concept of space. From the mountain, changing perspectives in the landscape of abstraction are discovered. Van Zwieten connects her work to the context of time and the societal debate. Besides implicitly warning against a too one-sided view, her recent works also seem to advocate for optimism.
"Couldn't it be nice," 2021, is the title of a work by Van Zwieten that is more than life-size. Large, brightly colored circles float in an abstract 'field' of pinkish-red with a serrated black area. It is a cheerful image with a dark edge, a sweet counterbalance to the dark times of the pandemic.

Photocredit: Beeldsmits

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THE PAINTING SHOW

Group Exhibition
tegenboschvanvreden
Amsterdam, NL
2020

It is evidently intrinsic to painting that, to this day, almost anything can be said about it. And with a validity which is, above all, determined very individually. How valid, for instance, is the painter Kerry James Marshall’s assertion that a painting always remains superior to the digital image because it cannot crash and is moreover always connected to life and to the commitment of the maker, whose personal signature remains discernible on the canvas? How true is the claim that painting has refused, to this day, to be relegated to the past once and for all?

Participating artists:

Ricardo van Eyk, Vera Gulikers, Christopher Mahon, Anna Ostoya, Carole Vanderlinden, Evi Vingerling, Anouk van Zwieten

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Drifting and Dreaming

tegenboschvanvreden gallery
Amsterdam, NL
Group exhibition
2018

A characteristic of the present is that it holds a certain potential: the present is always a bit more and a bit different than an isolated moment in history. 'Drifting and Dreaming' brings together the work of five young artists. Manifest in that work is a shifting, fluid, unfinished quality, which is full of potency. It shows that both past and present are, by definition, in a continual state of transformation as they reinvent themselves and each other time and again. What the works of these five artists have in common is their lack of a programmatic approach.
Each works in a specific medium without feeling the need to question that medium in a critical manner, being open-mind about the past and the future. Be it sculpture, painting or performance: they play with and in the chosen medium. In the individual stances that arise, the main focus is a contemplation of possibilities: Drifting and Dreaming.

Participating artists:

Inez De Brauw, Ricardo van Eyk, Claudia Martinez, Lorena Solis Bravo, Anouk van Zwieten

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Breakfast

HKU Exposure Graduation show
Utrecht, NL
2017

Exposure, graduation exhibition 2017.
My paintings are the material reflections of events that I observe and experience in daily life.  In transition, forms appear on canvas and new forms are generated through rapid personal associations and interpretations. Beneath every layer exists another painting, like the unconscious; not immediately visible but always present, and at moments, hidden images, feelings or experiences arise to the surface. Despite an apparent randomness, elements such as cigarettes, cans or other traces left by people on the street, regularly return in my work.

With these traces I explore the borders of reality in daily life. I observe reality like a kind of crime scene and connect it with my gestures as a painter, not to be recognized as specific brushstrokes or as the objects’ image itself, but to compose new observations and feelings on canvas.

The online Arch
Dakterras
170x105cm
oil on canvas

Arch Gallery
Amsterdam, NL
2022

The Arch is happy to present Dutch painter Anouk van Zwieten. Her colourful paintings are a response to what she encounters in and around her studio in Utrecht. Focusing on objects that on a subconscious level influence our mind, Van Zwieten acts like an observer. Given the fact that she paints intuitively and her direct environment is mostly safe and quiet, these objects are often the ordinary kind, such as shoes, a plate or a tree. Starting with a quick sketch, Van Zwieten then keeps adding layers, combining abstract forms with figurative shapes, finalizing it with energetic rough brushstrokes on the surface.