Unfollow the world: Jade van der Mark

The vitrines of luxury boutiques function as glossy screens—interfaces through which manufactured desires speak to us. Objects designed for symbolic value rather than practical use are staged like relics in a contemporary museum, reflecting a zeitgeist in which worth is measured by what one can afford to possess. In her expansive paintings, Jade van der Mark exposes this condition with unsettling clarity. Subject and object collapse into one another, and the pursuit of status becomes a quiet form of alienation.

 

Unfollow the World, Jade van der Mark’s (The Netherlands, 1990) first solo exhibition at VETA by Fer Francés, takes its title as both an invitation and a warning. It gestures toward the illness of our time: a culture saturated by overconsumption, relentless advertising, and digitally mediated identities. In a world where fashion has assumed the role of a new religion and social media its pulpit, the promise of a perfect life is endlessly performed, curated, and monetized. Queues form outside luxury stores like modern-day pilgrimages; runways, boutiques, and St. Tropez gatherings become ceremonial spaces where belonging is bought, displayed, and validated.

 

With a background in fashion, the Dutch artist observes contemporary society through the lens of mass culture. Her paintings operate as expressive snapshots of modern life, drawn from sales frenzies in department stores, bustling runway shows, glossy fashion campaigns, and magazine covers that elevate luxury into ideology.

 

Stylistically, van der Mark’s work blends the raw intensity of expressionism with careful compositional control. Flattened perspectives, layered forms, and exaggerated or distorted figures generate a phantasmagorical atmosphere in which the familiar becomes subtly estranged. By manipulating scale and proportion, she oscillates between the intimate and the monumental, constructing psychological depth through the friction between public performance and private emotion. Her figures—often clustered together—remain profoundly isolated, underscoring the paradox of hyper- connectivity in the digital age.

 

Although deeply rooted in the present, van der Mark’s paintings engage with universal questions of value, morality, and belief. Her canvases are saturated with bold color and tactile, sculptural impasto, creating highly synesthetic visual experiences.

 

The spaces depicted in van der Mark’s work transcend physical settings and transform into psychological landscapes. Luxury boutiques sterile, immaculate temples of capitalism become stages for ritualized consumption. Soft drapes, polished floors, and brightly colored accessories frame individuals who slowly turn themselves into commodities. In this world of lifeless objects, consumers are ultimately consumed.

 

Despite the sharp social critique embedded in her work, what makes Jade van der Mark’s paintings resonate is their emotional vitality. Each brushstroke pulses with urgency, capturing a time marked by confusion, loneliness, and overstimulation—yet also by wonder. Unfollow the World does not offer an escape, but a moment of recognition: a pause in the feed, a step back from the spectacle, and an invitation to reconsider where we place our attention, our desires, and our sense of self.