Gwendolyn Kassenaar is a London based, Dutch Visual Artist & Performer whose work is attracting considerable interest across the industry. A graduate from Chelsea College of Art, her Live-Art and studio work are based on rhythm, music and dance, capturing the intangible poetry of the ephemeral moment.

Her work provides a contribution to the arts which is believed to be unique, creating her own visual language through genuine two-way interaction with musicians and dancers, aided by her chromosthesia.

Gwendolyn’s vivacious artworks are instantly recognisable with her distinct use of colour and expressive gestural mark-making and have become highly sought after. Her work was recently shown at the prestigious Menuhin Concert Hall, Toulouse Lautrec Jazz Club and Vortex Jazz Club and features on album covers as well as in private and corporate art collections in the UK and abroad. Her Shoreditch live mural ‘Dance to Ecstacy’ in 2021 was her Public Art debut while E N I G M A  is her first solo show.

Gwendolyn is an established participant in the improvised music and jazz scene, regularly painting live on stage in London’s famous music and experimental art venues such as the Vortex Jazz Club, Café Oto, Iklectik and Hundred Years Gallery. She collaborates with highly regarded musicians including celebrated Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang, Orphy Robinson MBE and legendary improviser Maggie Nicols. She co-founded new collective Noisy Women, whose launch featured in iconic magazine The Wire, and was recently interviewed on Soho Radio.

For the Bloomsbury Festival 2022 Gwendolyn conceived ‘A Trajectory to Unsuffocation’, a moving performance depicting the unshackling of societal suffocation to reach personal liberation. In a sold-out theatre she created a giant 6x3m painting live improvised together with a dancer in just over 1 hour!

ARTIST STATEMENT

Like many before me, my artistic quest is to fuse colour, shape, rhythm, sound, dance and my own body movement. However my approach differs from related contemporary and historic art movements such as Action painting, Performance Art and Performance Drawing in that to me my performance and the final art work are of equal importance! 

‘I am a visual artist at heart. I work with my eyes open, not blindfolded and make deliberate marks as opposed to relying on chance or automatic response. I seek beauty in a balanced pictorial and colour composition, despite fully improvising at high speed in front of a live audience.’

My unique visual artist practice, which is more akin to how musicians work, enables me to do so. In my studio I practise for hours drawing and painting using audio/video of music and dance. Meticulous studio-based figurative, compositional and colour studies further enhance this as does regular sketching at multidisciplinary improv jams.

My practice is further informed by regular practice of esoteric movement method 5Rhythms, as movement is now a natural part of my painting action. I aim to evolve this, using my body to create circular geometry in a large scale composition.

I embrace the aleatory and hold playful experimental sessions in my studio with close collaborators. We mutually inspire each other to spark new ideas in connecting our art forms.

This is visible on stage as my live art performances are a genuine two-way interaction with dancers and musicians, as opposed to a one-way ‘responding’ or observing musicians/dancers as mere subject matter from a distance. 

As a result, I have developed my own visual language. My work is instantly recognisable with a distinct vibrant use of colour aided by my synaesthesia. I seek to go beyond the sensory experience, distilling the spiritual essence of the ephemeral event in space and time. 

I strive to continuously experiment and innovate both in my visual art and the way I perform.

CV

Group Exhibition ‘Music the Muse’, Yehudi Menuhin Concert Hall (2022)

Relay 2022, Live Art, multi-disciplinary improvised performance The Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington

Live Art Performance Cafe Oto, Dalston, Noisy Women concert

‘Musical Fragments’ interdisciplinary visual art & dance performance as part of Noisy People Orchestra, Cambridge

Album launch Art & Music collaboration with Meg Morley Trio

Live Art City University London, gamelan world premiere ‘Wira Buwana’ by Nengah Susila

Live Art performance Iklectik Art Lab, London Horse Improvisers Club

Live Art performance Hundred Years Gallery, Hoxton, Noisy Women concert

Group Exhibition ‘Music in the Museum’ Live Art performance in Wardown Museum Luton

Live Painting performance Hundred Years Gallery, Dalston Noisy Women concert

Live Art launch Noisy Women Present series Hundred Years Gallery, Hoxton

Live Painting performance duo with Beibei Wang Brunei Gallery SOAS, University of London

Album cover Robin the Fog

Solo Exhibit ‘Freedom’ Vortex Jazz Club during London Jazz Festival (2021)

OTZ Gallery Top 10 Defining Art Moments

Group Exhibition ‘Jazz in Art’ Toulouse Lautrec Jazz Club (2021)

Live Painting Performance Some Loose Assemblies Hundred Years Gallery, Hoxton

Artist Residency ExLab by OTZ Gallery, Shoreditch London

Spherical Improv collaboration series on YouTube

Album cover Loz Speyer

Album cover Apocalypse Jazz Unit

Solo Exhibit ExLab OTZ Gallery Shoreditch (2020)

Live Mural Shoreditch ‘Dance to Ecstacy’ (2020)

Live Art Performance multi-disciplinary performance Résonances, Vortex Jazz Club (2019)

Commission for German corporate collection (2018)

Ongoing:

Resident Artist & Curator at Freedom The Art of Improvisation, Vortex Jazz Club

Resident Artist at Melifera, Hundred Years Gallery

Resident Artist at Skronk, New River Studios