Biography
Pieter Laurens Mol (*1946 Breda NL) has produced an oeuvre that attests to a boundless world of imagination. He works in a wide range of media: photography, drawing, sculpture, painting and installations. With subtle wit and a philosophical manner, he presents to the viewer works of layered meanings, with multiple entries for perception and interpretation.
Mol is interested in a plethora of subject matter, ranging from the history of art to the lure of outer space, as elements that transcend time and space and introduce new meanings. Born in Breda, a provincial town in the south of the Netherlands, Mol’s work holds an interest in Dutch heritage and the past of Brabant, a province made famous by the artist Vincent van Gogh. In his teenage years he developed a passion for space travel and filled his days with building and experimenting with rockets. In secondary school he studied carpentry: he liked working with his hands and it turned out to be a better fit than a more academic education. He studied at the art academy in Breda for a short period, where he minored in photography.
At the end of the 1960s, inspired by the work of Duchamp, Klein, Picabia, Arp, and Beuys, Mol began his artistic practice. Thus followed a period of experimentation and an interest in conceptualism where Mol investigated the expressive possibilities of different media and materials. His work from this time stands out with a distinctively poetic and lyrical disposition and a sensitivity towards chance.
Mol brought his work to the Hague, where Galerie Orez offered to put a few of the pieces in their summer show. There, he befriended artists who helped him find a place to live and work in Amsterdam. He showed work in Amsterdam at the gallery of Dolly Melchers, Galerie 845, where he met the Icelandic artist Hreinn Fridfinnson, who then invited him to take part in a project in Iceland. In 1972, he was one of the founders of the In-Out Center in Amsterdam, one of the first artists’ initiatives in the Netherlands.
Mol’s photography dating from the 1970s often concerned the documentation of performances. However, from 1980 he began to use red lead on his photographs and his images transcended their documentary nature. These photos gradually became less autonomous and to serve as a vital component for a more complex constellation. In addition to materials with symbolic value, constructivist elements also appear in his works. In his assemblages he used materials like iron, lead, zinc, sulphur, tar and gunpowder, and even with household objects such as feathers, rolling pins, slates, tin cans, egg shells, funnels and straws. This indiscriminate sourcing of elements for his works demonstrates Mol’s non-hierarchical approach to artistic materials.
Titles have always been an important aspect in Mol’s work. They should be experienced as an inseparable part of the work, with the words and images going hand-in-hand. His titles can be seen as a type of key, an entryway in both the literal or narrative sense, to the work itself. From the 1990s onwards Mol moved towards the themes that would inform the majority of his oeuvre, such as the myth of Icarus and the symbolism of Saturn, Mars and Venus, which ultimately helped to expand his visual language.
Mol has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, such as the van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Stedelijk, Museum Amsterdam, Van Goghmuseum in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Basel, Malmö Konsthall, Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.