Cléa van der Grijn

Cléa van der Grijn is an international award-winning visual artist, film maker and writer based in Sligo. She employs various media in her practice, including site-specific installation, experimental film, large format photography, sculpture, drawing and painting.

Art has the unique ability to hold time in its layers. Cléa van der Grijn’s works embody the dynamic tension between what has been, what is, and what will unfold. Much more than surfaces, van der Grijn’s canvases are vessels of memory and transformation, each one a portal inviting us to explore and acknowledge the spaces between presence and absence, permanence and transience. 

Van der Grijn’s painted works demonstrate the artist’s process orientated philosophy, whereby compositions are formed in an unconventional manner, often deconstructed and reformed, deliberately revealing  traces of their history and allowing new meanings to emerge. In her latest solo exghibition here at Solomon (Orbiva, March 2025), we are presented with a series of these painted compositions in juxtaposition with their embroidered counterparts. A series of digitally embroidered iterations delicately retrace the vivid forms of the originals and display a comparative fragility which further emphases the artist’s preoccupation with transience and temporality. These works reflect the ephemeral nature of recognition- always the same, yet never quite so.

Van der Grijn has been exhibiting to considerable acclaim for over twenty five years in public and private art galleries in Ireland, Britain, Italy and the USA.  Van der Grijn’s 2019 film JUMP was selected for a number of film festivals and won awards at the International New York Film Festival and the OAXACA Film Festival, Mexico. In 2021 JUMP was acquired by the Irish Museum of Modern Art for their permanent collection.  In 2023 van der Grijn was the recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Authored Works Award which enabled her to make the feature length film 'Elisa in Wonderland' which recently premiered at IFI cinema in Dublin and has been selected for the New Jersey International Film Festival.  One of her large paintings was exhibited alongside Jack B Yeats in 'The Sligo Wave' exhibition at The Model in Sligo in 2024  and she was also an invited  artist at the Annual RHA exhibition.  

Van der Grijn 's work is represented in many private and public art collections including the Office of Public Works, The Arts Council of Ireland, Carton House, Bank of Ireland, AIB Bank, The Gate Theatre, Bord Gáis and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.Her work is represented in many other private and public art collections including the Office of Public Works, The Arts Council of Ireland, Carton House, Bank of Ireland, AIB Bank, The Gate Theatre, Bord Gáis and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.