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Pieter Laurens Mol (born October 26, 1963) is a contemporary Dutch artist based in Brussels, Belgium who works in photography, film, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. His work is often described as having great conceptual complexity with multiple layers of perception, interpretation, and meaning.

Early Life
Pieter Laurens Mol was born on October 26th, 1946 in Breda, Netherlands. Pieter began to pursue carpentry at the age of thirteen. He studied as a carpenter at the Bisschoppelijke Episcopal Trade School in Voorhout from 1959 to 1963. After studying carpentry in Voorhout, he decided to become an artist and began studying photography at the Saint Joost Academy in Breda. The creative environment helped him discover his artistic focus through photography. By 1965, he had graduated from the photographic section of the school with formal training in the fine art of photography and with more experience painting, drawing and creating art installations.

Evolution of Style:
After graduating from the St Joost Academy, Pieter started working as a photographer to explore the idea that photographs fail to capture reality. In 1970, he began to make his debut in the art world with his “photo sculptures.” These sculptures were self-staged photos of Mol in various positions with a motif of falling or flight. His photos were meant to comment on the “Condition Humaine” by showing that they are not necessarily representative of reality because he believed photos failed to capture the depth of emotion and the nuances of life experienced by humanity. He continued to challenge the idea that reality can be captured by simple words and photos as he emerged as a contemporary artist.

This sort of surrealism also was present in self staged photos where he was searching for something or finding love. All of this early art was intended to explore the concept of the human condition; the idea that we all must grow, love, learn, feel pain, and eventually die. His photographs were created to evoke a juxtaposition between the static nature of the moments they captured and the life behind the ideas like love they were supposed to help their beholders visualize. This relationship was an attempt to show the relationship humans have with the world.

Pieter began to experiment with new media and new focuses for his art during the later years of his career, but the human condition was still featured in much of his work. During the eighties, he began to incorporate actual sculpture into his photographs by layering objects and materials into the pieces. This was done to emphasize the connection between the photo and the real world. He started to focus less on human figure and more on traditional art like landscapes in the nineties. This marked a notable shift in his art style; it became more varied and conceptual when human figures were phased out.

His wide range of work has covered many topics over the years including his own life, his Dutch heritage, the relation between art and language, humanity's relationship with the world, death, suicide, existence, war and time. His early work was focused on photography; with works like his 1972 "The Dying Slave" and his late-seventies "Chamber Metaphysics" being notable. Photography was a medium he used to explore the relationship between humanity and the universe, whereas his sculptural projects were far more conceptual. The art he produced after the seventies was less focused on the way photographs captured the artist, and instead began to focus on concepts like death and the relationship between art and language. This shift can be seen when comparing his "Chamber Metaphysics" collection to his more recent "Silent Sorrow" collection; the first is entirely photos while the other includes sculptures, paintings, and photos with layers on them that create a very different theme.

Career
Pieter Laurens Mol began his career of the arts in the late sixties in Breda during his schooling. His first works were in a variety of media from painting and drawing to sculpture and installation. In his early works he focuses on images that capture self-staging artist. Once the nineties came around he began to change his images to still life and landscaping. In the 1980's, he poeticized significant concepts like loss and failure within his “photo sculptures.” This is what he called his photographs because he started taking pictures of objects hoping to capture the reality of the works on each media being used.

By the late 1900's Mol’s work had been shown in Europe for the last twenty-five years, but it was his first showing in New York. He uses his art to visualize ideas rather than to create reality. One thing he was known for throughout his career is his wording and how he uses words to evoke different meanings. Mol still has many works all over Europe and he currently lives and continues to create pieces in Brussels.

Influence
Throughout Pieter Laurens Mol’s artistic life, he continued to have a big impact on how art was interpreted by the audience. His focus on visual reality is said to make his art capture ideas rather than create images. By the 1990’s his photographs were widely known and his poetic conceptual-ism caught on with other artists from all over. Mol uses his art to explore the relationship between time and space, within the art itself and between the objects in the art and the viewer themselves. The way he includes his viewers in his creations puts a twist on the way artists think when they are working on their own masterpieces.

Mol works with a variety of techniques within the world of art. He is a true multimedia artist and has produced works where a variety of media were used to create a story for the viewer. He has brought in the qualities of his Dutch past contrasting them with the universes ideas and creating a relationship between the past and the present. His background was able to help him distinguish his work from others and influence the way more artists combine different form of media within one work.

Select Solo Exhibitions
2016 Parrotta Contemporary Art, Stuttgart, Denmark 2014 Farideh Cadot Associés, Paris, France 2013 Dust That Never Sets, Galerie Triangle Bleu, Stavelot, Belgium 2013 Interest Generator, De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2011 The Flyby, Galerie Nouvelles Images, The Hague, Netherlands 2009 La Salutation Bruxelloise, La Maison Dotremont, Brussels, Belgium 2008 Chant de Mars, Galerie Triangle Bleu, Stavelot, Belgium 2008 Plug In #37 / One on One, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands 2006 Galerie Nouvelles Images, The Hague, Netherlands 2005 the Gravity in Art, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2005 Root Out, Cast Up and Thrust Down, Galerie BowievanValen, Amsterdam,Netherlands 2004 Seashore/Semaphore, Galerie Nouvelles Images, The Hague,Netherlands 2000 Imminent Tempest, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent, Belgium 1999 Obsidio Bredana, Breda’s Museum, Breda, Netherlands 1999 Hollow Sorrow, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Diepenheim, Netherlands 1998 Winter over Spring, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland 1997 Ferro Fever, “In het Kabinet”, Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands 1996 Lure of Thumb, Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1996 Pulse and Orbit, Sean Kelly, New York, United States 1995 Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1994 Centre Saidye Bronfman, Montreal, Canada 1994 Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, United States 1994 Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Select Group Exhibitions
2015 TEFAF Maastricht, with Hidde van Seggelen Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2014 00:00:01 A Split Second, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent, Belgium 2014 Lés Echos De La Nature, annex14 Raum Für Aktuelle Kunst, Zürich, Switzerland 2014 Hoge Horizon. Bruegelland Vroeg 21e Eeuw, Stedelijk Museum Lier, Lier Belgium 2014 As Exciting As We Can Make It: Ikon In The 1980s, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom 2013 One of a Kind, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent, Belgium 2013 Donatie Maurice van Valen, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands 2013 After Nature. Collectie De Heus-Zomer, Museum Belvédère, Oranjewoud, Netherlands 2012 Downside Up, Galerie Triangle Bleu, Stavelot, Belgium 2012 Colorific, Ecole des Arts de Braine-l’Alleud, Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium 2011 Sculpture, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent, Belgium 2011 Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Hidde van Seggelen Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2010 Antigrav – Figuren des Schwebens und Schwindels, Parotta Contemporary Art, Stuttgart, Germany 2010 Het Onweerstaanbare Verlangen, Galerie Nouvelles Images, The Hague, Netherlands 2010 Far from Turmoil, Mol’s Place, London, United Kingdom 2009 Past-Present-Future #2, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent, Belgium 2007 Icare, Salle Saint-Georges / Le Musée de l’Art wallon de la Ville de Liège, Liége, Belgium 2005 Untitled Folly, Galerie Bowie van Valen, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2005 The Gravity in Art, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2004 Le Cinéma des Photographes Néerlandais, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France 2002 Chambres Séparées, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent. Belgium 2000 World Wide Flags - Drapeaux d’Artistes, Palais des Congrès, Liége, Belgium 1999 Sense of Drawing, Galerie Nouvelles Images, The Hague Netherlands 1999 Manufacturing Meaning, The Adam Art Gallery / Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand 1997 Lightness and Gravity, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia 1997 Amour & Obsession, Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent Belgium