Cultural Magazine El Sismógrafo
March 2005 - Dutch Abstract
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Dutch Abstract
It looks like an advertisement:
French Bordeaux, Danish Blue, Dutch Abstract….In fact Dutch Abstract is
the title of an exhibition of abstract art from the Low Lands, which is
to be visited in the offices of the OHIM (Spanish name OAMI) in Alicante,
from the 3 of March until 29 April. In the paintings that are exhibited,
the congealed light of the foggy Dutch delta meats the clear light of the
Mediterranean Spanish coast. The exhibiting artists Fons Heijnsbroek and
Ben Vollers both live and paint in Amsterdam, the city that is surrounded
by the Dutch polders, 3 meter under sea-level, at a distance of 20 kilometres
from the North Sea coast.
Every photographer making
pictures of paintings knows how hard it is to approximate the real colours
of a painting. By increase of digital design-possibilities of recent time,
one thing has shown: there is no such thing as the only real colour-version
of a painting. It never existed! The light in which we view a painting
cannot be commanded. It is by the grace of the changing of light that colours
come alive on the canvas. Every moment the light changes in quality and
varies the colours and tones. That’s the way light works most days of the
year in the cloudy and windy Netherlands. If the light in Alicante behaves
differently because of the dry air and much sunshine, then awaits the two
artists a revealing confrontation. Because it is the light that plays the
leading part in the paintings of “Dutch Abstract”. |
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| In the course of the years
Ben Vollers has more and more implicated light and atmosphere in his paintings.
About four years ago the work of the Venetian Rococo painter Tiepolo became
of great significance for him. Vollers’ thin cloudy apply of the paint,
put down with a loose brush, has got much relationship with the clear fresco
colours which Tiepolo so lightly conjured on the walls of so many Spanish
churches. This meeting with an old painter gave Ben Vollers’ colour pallette
much clarity, a dose of carelessness and a kind of stiff charm. However,
Dutch origin cannot be pushed away so easily. Good art always has its regional
part too: it is not afraid to show its roots, its typical origin. In the
paintings of Ben Vollers we can smell the Dutch moist air and the humid
soil in which the houses stand. In the way of painting of Ben Vollers we
easily find traces of the painting tradition of Dutch landscape. But we
will not find spacious distances in the works of Ben Vollers, because he
has lifted up the landscape. Upright it stands in front of our very eyes.
We don’t look into the depth in his works, but at the things and forms
which populate his canvases. But still there is between these many things
and forms the space left of which we can feel the mist and the damp. |
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The work of Fons Heijnsbroek
is connected with another and much younger tradition which just set in
around 1910. It was Mondriaan who radically choose the assault on the Dutch
custom to paint compulsively all in brown and grey-like colours. Through
French Cubism, Mondriaan achieved a great deal of clearness for later painting.
Moreover he gave transcendent meanings to a definitely modernistic art.
Both influences can be discovered in the works of Fons Heijnsbroek, the
clearness as well as a transcendent option.
Walking in his Garden is
the title of the series of his paintings that are exhibited at Dutch Abstract.
In essence it is an undeniable reference to the Garden of Eden and the
great Gardener. It is not that Heijnsbroek pretends to know the Gardener
himself but he does know very well his Garden, the world in which we live
and walk every day.
Heijnsbroek looks around
and gathers all his impressions in his private virtual storage room. These
are impressions of all the living beings, the trees, the city, the animals
and things which surround him.
It is the tradition of abstract
art in which Fons Heijnsbroek places his own art. Similar to the work of
Ben Vollers, it is the living things of our world that populate his canvases,
even though they are not recognizable.
They stand in this inaccessible
light that surrounds them on all sides. The paint is put down in a most
direct way, without any inclination to reach atmosphere or tonality. Fons
Heijnsbroek has chosen for an unavoidable wideness, as well in the painted
images |
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| as in the space around them.
The images seem to become sculptures on the canvas, built mostly by lines.
What inside is or outside is not clear; it is space itself which plays
the leading part.
It is these two characteristics
of Dutch painting that one can clearly recognize in the exhibition “Dutch
Abstract” in the OHIM. You can find the soft and atmospheric light as well
as the radical turning to an inexorable clarity, both represented by two
congenial painters who cannot deny their roots. Ben Vollers as well as
Fons Heijnsbroek use their intuition to reach a new and unknown language
of images.
Jan Homacher |
| This exhibition
will be completed with the works of the sculptor Roy Ledgard.
Due to the unavoidable security
measures of the building , it is required to notify your visitpreviousy,
sending your Name and DNI to kepasa@europe.com or calling xxxxxx (leave
information on the answerphone))
For any additional info:
kepasa@europe.com
art_points_@hotmail.com
www.artpointsonline.com |
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