Sanne Rous’s work consists of paintings and drawings. Her views on painting are based on the realization that painting enters into a continuous interaction with other media – including installations, photography, video and performance – and is thus part of a world of images that extends far beyond the boundaries of the painted canvas. Her (painterly) thinking is all about observing and activating the gaze. Painting offers opportunities in this age of digital manipulation: it can be disobedient, even subversive, because – after being endlessly declared dead – it has sung away from the ballast of traditional expectations that it holds on to. Rous gratefully makes use of this freedom. The works of Rous have various starting points. They come from observations and memories as well as from stories and photos. What connects the works is not so much a narrative aspect, rather they share a world in which the sensory experience of looking (a looking that is also feeling) is central. Rous: “The works are painted musings about the images that I see around me. They are often images that cannot be interpreted directly. They can go in different directions, depending on the circumstances. Often a work starts with something that I see, a fleeting moment that gets stuck. I try to be open in it. Everything can be a potential subject. While painting, I scan an image. Usually I first make small paintings in which I am just trying and searching. I am fascinated by the speed and casualty in which images can arise while painting on a small size: the painting becomes an expanding mental space where the possibilities of the image are tested.”
Sanne Rous was born in 1984 in Apeldoorn (NL). She followed an exchange program at the Art Institute in San Francisco (US) in 2005. In 2006 she completed her Bachelor’s degree at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). In 2008 she obtained her Masters degree at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen (NL). In 2012 and 2013 she was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (NL). Her work was shown in group exhibitions at The Cassini Cruise, Maastricht (NL); Kunstruimte De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (NL); The Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (NL); Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (NL); Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (NL); Natuurmuseum, Groningen (NL). Her work is represented in private and public collections at home and abroad.