Softlock, 2022

Lara de Moor (1969, Netherlands) paints interiors that play with our imagination. They are places that we find familiar, but a second glance always reveals something that defies reality. Softlock (2022) shows a corner of an imposing room bathed in pink light. Three transparent panels float suspended in mid-air. Like echoes of the doorway beside them – behind which a second space can be seen, plunged in darkness – they hang there, solidified in time.

            De Moor sees her serene interiors as containers of the lives lived within them. Although people are largely absent, the traces they leave are visible and tangible, and determine the atmosphere. De Moor works by means of actual spaces that she photographs, stage-manages and then manipulates while painting. Each painting feels as if we have entered another person’s inner world. By working with the power of suggestion De Moor leaves full scope for the observer’s perception.