Viviane Sassen Creates Unique Painted Prints from Versailles Photographs for Aperture

Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen has produced a series of unique limited-edition prints through a collaboration with Aperture. Each print originates from photographs Sassen took during a six-month residency at the Palace of Versailles in 2018, where she was granted after-hours access to document the gardens, Baroque interiors, and historical artifacts like Marie Antoinette's letters. Sassen then individually paints over these digital C-prints with vivid acrylic varnish, creating abstract forms and hybrid shapes that engage with the statues' representations of bodies, sexuality, and gender, evoking Surrealist traditions. The project coincides with the release of her limited-edition artist book 'Venus & Mercury' (2022), designed in collaboration with Irma Boom, which offers a radical visual reinterpretation of Versailles. The edition is limited to 12 prints plus 2 artist's proofs, each measuring 15.7 by 23.2 inches (40 by 60 centimeters). Sassen, born in 1972 in Amsterdam, studied at the Utrecht School of the Arts and Ateliers Arnhem. Her career highlights include a 2012 fashion retrospective at Huis Marseille, participation in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and awards such as the 2007 Prix de Rome and the 2011 ICP Infinity Award. The prints are shipped from New York within 3–5 days.