Ronald Versloot

Ronald Versloot‘s (1964) hallmark is the use of linoprint in paintings. In just a few apt strokes he delineates a landscape or an interior, in which he prints human figures by means of a linocut. With this he investigates the age old problem problem in painting,  how to integrate the human figure with the environment and background of the image. The lino figures are actors, as it were, who are performing in the painted setting. The question whether the painted images are real or rather the printed ones is intensified by the frequently mysterious representations. Each time it is as if you see the moment just before or after a dramatic event.

In his latest paintings and pastel drawings Roland Versloot likes to play with the conventions of representation and the conditioning of our perception. Often he adds a certain degree of suspense to the image. In Scene (2024), for example, he places a hat on a rock, making you wonder whether the owner has gone away for a while, gone swimming in the river or even drowned. In other drawings a tree contains a silhouette, a woman’s dress turns into a pile of rocks.

Versloot calls his wire figures floating drawings. A tree trunk topped with a hat, a woman’s face in a mirror or a couple making love are rendered in outline and placed freely in space or slightly in detached from the wall so they cast a subtle shadow. The wire figures are akin to the lino figures Versloot used earlier in his paintings. These too were present as contours, like actors on a painted stage. He thus thematised the age-old Figure – Ground problem in painting: how to connect the human figure with the background. With the floating drawings, he goes a step further by placing them freely in space as independent figures