Marcelino Hooi (b. 1993, Netherlands) paints the pictures we take every day without even thinking about it. The drinks on a terrace table, the storefront of a bar, a dog on the sidewalk, a plate of food. Images taken, sent, posted, and forgotten. All within a moment. Images taken for something other than becoming a memory.

The question his practice keeps asking is: What happens to all of them? All of these everyday pictures that fulfill their small purpose and then disappear forever, into the excess of our camera rolls. The tens of thousands of photos he claims to keep himself. What is their worth? Why do we even keep them?

Hooi takes these individual images from his iPhone camera roll and paints them in oil. He paints them slowly, without rush, in countless layers. Making small mistakes, sometimes correcting them, sometimes deciding to completely change the painting halfway through. Giving the image the time and attention it was not destined to get in the first place.

“I want you to recognise my paintings as the everyday snapshot you could have taken, and I want you to see it in a way you haven’t before: without its usual fleetingness, but with weight instead. The weight of time spent. The weight of the labor, materials, and countless decisions it took for me to bring this image to a final painting.” - Marcelino Hooi, 2026