Now:
SUMMER
Arthur Cordier, Janice McNab
Ronald Versloot
paintings, wire figures
15 – 30 July 2023
after that by appointment till 20 August
Arthur Cordier, Bord de Route, 2023, vinyl, paper on pvc, 110 x 80 cm
Janice McNab, Summer, 2021, oilpaint on canvas, 120 x 120 cm
Ronald Versloot, Lighten Up, 2022, copperwire, spraypaint, 50 x 30 cm
Arthur Cordier, no title (AC>2023.02), 2023, vinyl, pvc, 2x 80 x 100 cm
Janice McNab, Undone, 2019, oilpaint on linenpaper, 47 x 50 cm
Ronald Versloot, Listen Up, 2022, wood, copperwire, spraypaint, 50 x 30 x 17 cm
Arthur Cordier, Swirl, 2023, vinyl, paper on pvc, 100 x 80 cm
In the painting Summer, rose tinted sunglass lenses cover flower petal eyes and a golden body bleeds droplets in the heat. A silk scarf is transformed into a Ghost Garden, and a night blooming Cereus drips light on its cactus body. Janice McNab (1964) is a Scottish artist who lives in The Hague. Her paintings conjure feminine experience out of the things we eat and wrap ourselves with, the wire and tape of emergency repairs, and the flowers of the psychological desert. Her Woman in Black and Blue has a cake plate for a head, and throughout her work, eyes are painted as balls of fire.
Arthur Cordier (1993) uses discarded truck tarpaulin as the basis for his paintings. On the weathered and discoloured surface of the tarpaulin, he applies a composition of organic and abstract shapes with tape and sticker sheets. The organic shapes are based on photos of plant leaves that he prints on vinyl, cuts out and sticks on the painting. The vinyl is partially removed, leaving the shapes partly revealed and partly concealed
In other works the vinyl is used as a temporary mask to lighten up the contours of the plants on the pvc. Besides this formal research, Arthur Cordier also makes a social statement by bringing economically discarded material into his artistic process.
Ronald Versloot (1964) shows a series of wire figures that he calls floating drawings. A man smoking a pipe, a woman’s face in a mirror or a couple embracing are rendered in outline and placed in space or slightly detached form the wall.
The wire figures are akin to the lino figures Versloot used earlier in his paintings where they were as well 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 one step beyond by placing them freely in space as independent figures.
