15.05. - 27.07.2013
Robert Zandvliet (born 1970, lives in Rotterdam)
In his latest group of works, the artist deals with stones. He was inspired for this by the book "Pierres" by the French surrealist Roger Caillois. “This spoke to them of a storage function from the emergence of crystals and minerals, which is articulated in the drawing or structure of the stones. The principle of life shows itself in the most beautiful way in the seeming immortality of the stone. Cailloi's favorites are the pieces that are rather "spoiled" for collectors: septaries, sycamores or the inferior crystals.
The purity, the most important criterion for their value, repels him because of their lack of traces. In the "drawn" stones, on the other hand, he recognizes the handwriting of nature, to which he ascribes the character of all art with almost pantheistic enthusiasm - for Caillois it makes no difference whether a stone or a sculpture is an object of aesthetic edification what interests Robert Zandvliet.
Andreas Fiedler writes about the work in general:
"Since the mid-1990s, Robert Zandvliet has developed a work with pronounced painterly consistency that can basically be divided into a few main groups of motifs. The first important group of works is the series of objects, which was completed around ten years ago: The motifs were individual, formally always very reduced Objects - such as a hairpin, a camera or an empty cinema screen. Towards the end of the 1990s, Robert Zandvliet painted the first landscapes, which have since grown into an extensive group of works. While landscape reference points could initially be determined in these works, the painterly one became Gestus freed up in the course of time, even the horizon line finally dissolved completely in a dynamic, moving style of painting. Another group of works are the works summarized by the artist under the term Autobahn, intertwined lines and colored brush paths that cross at a distance from the mesh n streets remember. In the last three years - as always in very different image formats - a group has emerged of portraits that continued Zandvliet's principle of the synthesis of extremely well thought-out image structure and spontaneous expression.
For Robert Zandvliet, who on principle never names his works, the objective point of departure for his painterly investigations is always of elementary importance. This also applies to those works that at first glance no longer reveal any motivic reference. The visible reality provides the painter with a few formal key data.
The starting point can be a conventional egg carton, the silhouette of a striking mountain or the idea of a sail on the water in a light breeze. Robert Zandvliet never completely gives up the subject as a controlling authority for his formulations on the canvas.
Andreas Fiedler, 2008
In his latest group of works, the artist deals with stones. He was inspired for this by the book "Pierres" by the French surrealist Roger Caillois. “This spoke to them of a storage function from the emergence of crystals and minerals, which is articulated in the drawing or structure of the stones. The principle of life shows itself in the most beautiful way in the seeming immortality of the stone. Cailloi's favorites are the pieces that are rather "spoiled" for collectors: septaries, sycamores or the inferior crystals.
The purity, the most important criterion for their value, repels him because of their lack of traces. In the "drawn" stones, on the other hand, he recognizes the handwriting of nature, to which he ascribes the character of all art with almost pantheistic enthusiasm - for Caillois it makes no difference whether a stone or a sculpture is an object of aesthetic edification what interests Robert Zandvliet.
Andreas Fiedler writes about the work in general:
"Since the mid-1990s, Robert Zandvliet has developed a work with pronounced painterly consistency that can basically be divided into a few main groups of motifs. The first important group of works is the series of objects, which was completed around ten years ago: The motifs were individual, formally always very reduced Objects - such as a hairpin, a camera or an empty cinema screen. Towards the end of the 1990s, Robert Zandvliet painted the first landscapes, which have since grown into an extensive group of works. While landscape reference points could initially be determined in these works, the painterly one became Gestus freed up in the course of time, even the horizon line finally dissolved completely in a dynamic, moving style of painting. Another group of works are the works summarized by the artist under the term Autobahn, intertwined lines and colored brush paths that cross at a distance from the mesh n streets remember. In the last three years - as always in very different image formats - a group has emerged of portraits that continued Zandvliet's principle of the synthesis of extremely well thought-out image structure and spontaneous expression.
For Robert Zandvliet, who on principle never names his works, the objective point of departure for his painterly investigations is always of elementary importance. This also applies to those works that at first glance no longer reveal any motivic reference. The visible reality provides the painter with a few formal key data.
The starting point can be a conventional egg carton, the silhouette of a striking mountain or the idea of a sail on the water in a light breeze. Robert Zandvliet never completely gives up the subject as a controlling authority for his formulations on the canvas.
Andreas Fiedler, 2008
Exhibited works
