Born in 1965 Marcel van Eeden’s magnum opus is to make a drawing a day based on sources that precede the year of his birth. Using imagery culled from an array of historical material – illustrations from old books, topographical atlases, films, art history, newspaper clippings, photo archives, magazines such as Life, Paris Match and others – van Eeden has set himself the task of drawing a vast visual diary of a world he never knew. He begins a new drawing by starting in the top left corner and ending at the bottom right. In between emerges a bewildering range of images: explosions, trains, streetscapes, abstractions, accidents, sex acts, divers, diagrams, botanical specimens, on and on. That none of the imagery reflects the era of their maker suggests that his legacy will be a project that immortalizes his absence as much as it did his presence. In selecting more than one hundred of these drawings to be included in the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006) one of the curators, Massimilano Gioni, wrote that van Eeden’s “visual universe in fact seems affected by a radical form of iconophilia, an unstoppable urge to consume images and at the same time, by doing so, save them from oblivion.” Van Eeden’s project has been compared to the conceptual strategies of On Kawara and to the vast compendium of images compiled in Gerhard Richter’s Atlas.
Marcel van Eeden’s drawings have been widely exhibited. In 2007 alone exhibitions have been mounted at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm and at Draíoch in Dublin. Solo shows are planned for 2008 in Paris, Rome and Los Angeles. His work can be found in prominent public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art New York, Magasin 3 Stockholm, the Sammlung Goetz Collection and the Burger Collection.
