Year: 2022 
Material /Technique: Colored pencil on paper behind handmade glass

Hyaline Hide is a series composed by seven artworks around the material of glass. ‘Hyaline’, from the Greek húalos, means glassy, crystalline, or amorphous. ‘Hide’ refers to (animal) skin or shelter. Venema made several glass reliefs placed in front of drawings, like a second skin. When a spectator walks around the works, the relief creates subtle distortions in the drawings, literally taking different perspectives formed the basis of the project. 

These works are inspired by the idea that infection − an organism that enters or coincides with another organism (thus connecting inside and outside) – leads to complexity and enrichment. Especially for the Novartis Amsterdam office Venema took seven clinical images (that corresponded with the seven therapeutical areas Novartis specializes in) as a starting point. His vision has been guided by the different therapeutical areas of Novartis and translated this into drawings and glass works. In each case, he looked for the idea of symbiosis. This is expressed in the combination of two materials: the drawing and the glass. 

From left to right please find below a description of the seven artworks: 

• Feral Cells represents cancer research. Venema took a histological image of cancer cells as the basis for the multi-colored glass work. The monochrome drawing shows a circular shape that repeats itself, which symbolizes how cancer cells multiply. 
• We Are All Lichens Now represents dermatology, showing a symbiotic organism, the lichen. Lichens are a composite organism of fungi and algae and grow on stones, wood and even in an adapted form on human skin.
• Community Vessels refers to the blood vessel system. Venema made a drawing of a fictitious microscopic image of blood vessels, which not only looks like a blood vessel but could also be seen as the root of a plant. The color comes from a handmade glass plate on which he applied glass powders to create a multi-colored piece of glass.
• For Santiago Ramón y Cajal is an ode to the scientist Cajal who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, made the first drawing of neurons in the brain based on microscopic research. 
• A Common (Lung) shows a glass lung floating in the air. Venema wanted to show how everyone breathes the same air and thus we are always in unseen connection with each other.
• For the artwork Transplant V (Revolving Doors), Venema melted a sea-green glass plate over an anatomical model of a heart. 
• Ocular depicts a microscopic image of an eye.

Artist

Wouter Venema (Groningen 1985-) is a visual artist living and working in Rotterdam. After completing his Master of Arts at the Sandberg Institute, he was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. 

With a background in film, Wouter Venema is interested in the meaning of recording and capturing people, objects, moments and time. Whenever he starts a new series, Venema uses a networked way of working. He broadly researches a particular subject: he looks for stories, myths, theories, and speculations linked to a particular image or object to find unexpected connections.
His work has been shown in multiple art venues such as Gallery Rianne Groen Rotterdam, Solyanka Gallery Moscow, Art Rotterdam and P/////AKT Amsterdam. Venema participated in Unfair14. His work is part of the collection of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and several other private collections.