About Martijn Tharner

Martijn Tharner was born on 24 June 1981 in Almelo/Netherlands.

Graduated in 2005 from the AKI Academy of Art and Design in Enschede/Netherlands in the direction of painting and graphics and has been an Illustrator and visual artist ever since.

After his graduation Martijn joined Ateliers 93 in Hengelo in the Netherlands and has in recent years participated in various exhibitions including the exhibition ''Pop-ups temporarily allowed" on 17 December 2005 in the Kunstenlab in Deventer.

About my work.

My work often deals with the way we treat each other.

For example, I graduated in 2005 with a series of etchings based on the Marvel comic heroes. By placing them in a strange contemporary setting, they were pulled out of their familiar context. The new setting gave the otherwise strong heroes a vulnerable and tragic comic character.

In yet another series of works from 2015, Maslow's pyramid was highlighted with the Tower of Babel in a contemporary setting. In this series, the way of how we interact with each other was depicted in various facets. Among other things, the digitalisation of our society was discussed a lot. I would also like to refer to the book The Game by Alessandro Baricco, which came out in May 2019.

In my latest works (2021), the theme of travel is central. With a burning desire and nostalgia for the familiar way of travelling as we knew it before the crisis, the traveller is confronted with a new situation and different reality.  This changes the way the traveller moves around. But luckily there is hope and the traveller sees that nature is a good base to recharge his batteries: Return to innocence