Gea van Eck was born in Leiden in 1974. She grew up next to her grandfather’s scrap company. This terrain full of old cars and iron objects was her playground. There were screws, bolts, iron wires and a lot of junk to play with. She still loves the smell and texture of rust and she still has a predilection for old materials. She discovered that you can always make something special out of nothing. The smallest things can be treasures. She also loved the fact that nature seemed to win from granddad. Oil didn’t stop plants from growing.

In 1997 Gea graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), Autonomous design, painting. Since a few years she has moved away from working on a flat surface to making spatial objects out of wool. Gea looks with her hands. She touches and feels and translates all the information into an image. Her pieces, often stand-alone objects, are both soft and cuddly and confrontational. Influences from painting play a role with regard to the skin of her objects.

Her ideas stem from observing the world around her. Noticing the beauty and the resilience, but also the contradictions and the injustice. The contrast. Astonishment about man, behaviour, interaction. About people and their relationship to the world and each other.

Gea exhibited in Bologna, among other places. In 2017 her work “Washed up”, a life size mother and child, has been exhibited in the summer expo at the Foundation.