“The origins of Pink Pillow go back long before this exhibition. Gebben once set herself the task of describing the softness of a pink pillow, using a dip pen on the roughest handmade paper. If she succeeded, she would allow herself to become a writer. When she failed, she abandoned the task, carried on with her life and eventually became a photographer. Yet the pillow remained in her mind. Because of its softness and colour, but also because it seemed to offer her a way of mentally disappearing elsewhere. In this sense, the pink pillow is also connected to The Flux, the imaginary reality whose existence Gebben has been trying to prove since graduating from the Fotoacademie Amsterdam. She sees the pillow as a possible gateway to that imaginary world: you rest your head on it and disappear from immediate reality, into thought or sleep.” From: Exhibition text by Marieke Holtjer
Show: solo in Galerie Noord, September 26 - October 22 2026
Essay: PINK PILLOW, een verklaring (in Dutch)
Review: Eric Bos, ‘Het verlangen naar een zachte, roze wereld’ (The Longing for a Soft, Pink World)
Interview: Eva Hulscher interviews Mariëlle Gebben (in Dutch)
Music: Bob van der Linde plays The Pink Panther Theme on carillon
Opening Speech: Menno de Bree, Over kleuren, kunst en diepe, diepe eenzaamheid (in Dutch)
“Ultimately, Gebben returns to her own relationship with the colour: she is simply in love with it. Of all the qualities she associates with pink, softness and presence are the most important to her. The pillow possesses these same qualities. The combination of the object and the colour offers her, as she writes, ‘an incredibly deep well of creative inspiration’.” - Marieke Holtjer
“You don't have to touch a pillow to experience softness. You can already see it in the folds and in the indentation where your head was resting just moments ago.” - Mariëlle Gebben
“One wall sculpture is not pink, but white. A waterfall of white cotton threads, flowing and foaming. But then we discover that the white cotton casts a pink shadow on the wall. How is that possible? Go and see for yourself. This remarkable phenomenon is real.” - Eric Bos
“...when you step into the gallery, the pink embraces you, and an artistic world unfolds, along
with a particular feeling.As though you are discovering something that belongs to the hidden beauty of the world, concealed behind all the other colours. Ready to change everything, and therefore a little unsettling, too.” - Eric Bos
with a particular feeling.As though you are discovering something that belongs to the hidden beauty of the world, concealed behind all the other colours. Ready to change everything, and therefore a little unsettling, too.” - Eric Bos
“Pink raises questions, pink is given meaning. Pink has presence. And for me, despite everything I know about it, pink is still, above all, soft. It is a colour that fills me with tenderness, that I want to protect, that I want to put in my coat pocket and take everywhere with me. I want to stroke pink, lick it and, if it were possible, hear it. I want to spread pink throughout the world and show how beautiful it is, how extraordinary it is that it exists.”
“This still says nothing about the pillow. In fact, it makes the pillow redundant: after all, I am saying that it does not matter what is pink, as long as it is pink. But that overlooks the qualities of the pillow itself. The pillow is in itself a manifestation of the two strongest associations I have with pink: softness and presence. The shape of a pillow is beautiful, its curves, its creases, the indentation where your head was resting just moments ago. What is wonderful is the way you can take hold of it and change its shape yourself. Give it a quick shake or a pat, and it returns to its original form. Sometimes it is warm, sometimes cool.”
“There is nothing ordinary about a pillow: like pink, it is a wonder that it exists and that it serves us for sleeping, resting and making our mental journeys. It is the combination of the object (the pillow) and the colour (pink) that provides me with an incredibly deep well of creative inspiration.” - Mariëlle Gebben
