More Happy – More Curious

Cedric Christie – Andreas Exner

Andreas Exner

Andreas Exner, Gelber Rock / Yellow Skirt , 2013 farbric,zip, pins

to elevate nothing into something…. The work of Andreas Exner

Face to face with a work from Andreas Exner I see nothing but the Thing itself (das Ding an sich) … and so encounter something beyond that which I see. There’s the object that it is … and what it points to beyond… 

Andreas Exner - 4 Bilder , Off Hook, Groningen 2023
Andreas Exner – 4 Bilder , Off Hook, Groningen 2023

A dark green triangle of woollen fabric insists that I come closer and enquire of it. What are you? Why are you like that? As such, we are in the realm of human desire – wanting to know something about another being

A filled-in surface of mute colour makes me smile but I don’t know what the joke is. Openings that are filled in: containers that are satisfyingly full to the brim. They are full only with their own materiality, their own matter – a silent interior. 

There is nothing there. There is nothing.

It’s the nothing, this little no-thing that we hold so dear, because it’s always there. Always there but also hidden. An artwork shows this Thing by elevating a little nothing into something grand: it takes any old thing and transforms it into something with dignity, transforms it into something sublime, perhaps. 

You might think old clothes, large underpants and toilets are undignified, but in the care of Exner they convey a transcendence that comes from the human subjects, the bodies, they infer or index. There is a substantial kindness at work here, a kindness that tolerates the abject, the refused, the disliked: the sort of kindness we need in the world these days.

I see the stuff of Exner and I feel myself: the coloured works map my body and soul. These works are a writing, and as such are intrinsically social, knitting together the symbolic of language and the real beyond. See there… the word sozial made soft and limp, holes into a patchwork curtain so that it shows its own underbelly. And there… a skirt once worn around a woman’s waist – now a majestic site. And here, the common automobile injected with uplifting colour into the open windows: such an act transforms the suburban street into a venue of mysterious and playful interaction, and transforms the ordinary object, an object of daily commerce and industry, into a Thing of love. 

It’s social work: empowering the nothings so that we might have desire for life.

Lizzy Newman 2006

Andreas Exner , Artists Acrylics Brilliant Pink; Fiat 850
Andreas Exner, Drei Kleider / 3 Garments

Cedric Christie

Cedric Christie Bonnet

When I look at a Judd, I see a question. 

That’s what they were doing then: asking questions like “Could this be a sculpture or is it just an object?” 

So how do you ask those questions now? How do you ask the same questions but in a different context? It’s a bit like politics.

Two hundred years ago, someone had the idea to abolish slavery, and through politics, changes were made. Now, in the present day, I can ask the questions “How am I benefiting from the change? – how have those changes made an impact?” 

Excerpt  from an interview with Katrina Blannin /  MASS Sculpture Magazine, Issue 2, 2023

Cedric Christie Colour Unlocked
Cedric Christie Colour Unlocked
Cedric Christie Colour Unlocked

Molly Thomson and Franziska Reinbothe

28. October.2023 – 11. November.2023 Preview Thursday 26.10.2023

Molly Thomson

Molly Thomson, Slot and block Medium: Acrylic on panel construction Size: 42 x 40 x 10 cm 2023

My conversation is with the object of the painting and with its hybrid identities. Beginning most often with the simple fact of the rectangular painting panel I place myself in the position of both agent and observer, using acts of cutting, reassembling and pouring to re-form – and respond to – each piece. I am interested not only in the layered facade that is presented, but also in the fact that the painting casts and contains shadows. There is always a delicate balance between control and the unpredictable behaviour of the object, and the process advances by slow increments, mis-steps and revisions. Occasionally work descends from the wall and demands space or even mobility. There is play and sometimes there is humour.

Current work continues to evolve through the setting of a series of problems and displacements in each structure. Interior spaces are often implicated, even if only glimpsed through the smallest of openings, and I am interested in the quiet question that such breaks in the facade might pose. Some paintings may quietly allude to what cannot or shouldn’t be seen, while others flex their joints or extend their surfaces with a touch more expansiveness. Often it can seem to me that order is provisional – something to be tampered with.

Molly Thomson, Red, with opening Medium: Acrylic on panel construction Size: 37 x 46 x 5 cm 2022
Molly Thomson, Cavity Medium: Acrylic on panel construction Size: 34 x 23 x 5 cm 2023

Franziska Reinbothe

Franziska Reinbothe, Fächer,2023, ca.90x50x12 cm, acrylic on canvas

In painting, I am interested in what usually remains hidden: the back of a picture and its edges. In order to make them visible, I compress canvases, expose stretcher frames or do without them altogether. I stretch, fold, break, cut through and/or sew up my paintings after the painting process is complete. Some of them then protrude far into the room, others have already completely detached themselves from the wall.

Curiosity and impulsiveness, not iconoclasm, are my driving forces – and chance and accident lie close together in my artistic work.

I do not work project-based, but continuously in the process. In doing so, I trust in the making, instead of making decisions that restrict me in advance. What happens if I break the strips of the painting? And what if I subsequently repair them? And what will the picture look like if I use transparent chiffon fabric instead of paint, for example? No matter which of the previous and upcoming image-finding strategies I use: It is always about contemporary painting, its means and possibilities.

Franziska Reinbothe, n.T. 2019/22, ca 62x44x10 cm, acrylic on canvas
Franziska Reinbothe, n.T., 2015/22, ca. 93x72x20 cm, ball pen, spray paint and acrylic on canvas

opening times Saturday 14-18 and by appointment

Simon Callery and Georg Schmidt

RAUMX London 12.05 – 27.05.2023 Preview Thursday 11.05.2023

Simon Callery, Stura; 2021

Simon Callery

I am a painter. In order to understand what painting can do today I have made works that exist on the margins of what can be understood as painting. I have written the word ‘INVERT’ on my studio wall to remind me every day that I must subvert the established conventions of image-based painting if I want to find new roles and develop new forms of painting. It is my intention that an encounter with one of my paintings is as much for the body as it is for the eye.

I have worked in the landscape alongside field archaeologists on many projects. What I have learnt there I have applied to works made in the urban environment and developed in studio based work. The visceral qualities of the excavation sites have made me sensitive to the physical qualities of landscape and the relationship of material to time.

The paintings share spatial qualities we associate with sculpture and I embrace it. We live in image dominant cultures and it is possible to say that the stress on the visual in everyday life inevitable suppresses the other senses. I am working to give painting a material body and as a consequence, a better awareness of our own.

Simon Callery, Country Register, 2018
  • born London
  • Graduated from Cardiff College of Art 1983
  • Has shown extensively in the UK and internationally since 1990s.
  • Public collections include: Arts Council Collection, London; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. Birmingham Museums Trust. British Museum. European Investement Bank, Luxembourg. Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. Nottingham Trent University. Stanhope plc. Tate
  • Forthcoming shows 2023: Inauguration Lo Brutto Stadl, Paris. Arcadia for all? Rethinking Landscape Painting now. Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds. Simon Callery & Vlatka Horvat, Annex14, Zuerich. Space as Duty of Care, Studio G7,Bologna. Ouverture, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Simon Callery & Georg Schmidt, RAUMX-London. Simon Callery.Contact paintings, CAB, Burgos. The Surface of Place and the Depth of Place . Rudolfinum, Prague.
Simon Callery, Second Red Mantle, 2021

Georg Schmidt

Georg Schmidt, Higgs, 2018

The exchange with researchers from the field of quantum physics has had an influence on my painterly reflections for some time. At the beginning of this discussion was the question of what the Higgs field is all about. The description of an energetic field struck me, not directly perceptible to us, but with significant effects on our world. It seemed to me as if I had encountered here the paraphrase of an underpainting, as it has been used in painting for centuries. Color as underpainting can be like a Higgs field in the picture as a force field effective. While painting, I am preoccupied with this principle of layering, spatially dynamic processes of colourful relationships that are not commensurable or measurably defined in a state. Further concepts, such as chaos and order, determination and coincidence as well as interactions, spatial movements, dimension and proportions I reflected with the pictorial means of painting. Like a tapestry of sound, this encounter with the theme of quantum physics accompanied me in the studio.

Georg Schmidt, Studio Duo, 2022
Georg Schmidt, EA9, 2021 (Watercolour)
  • Born               Lübeck, Germany
  • 1985-1989    Philosophie, Universität Hamburg
  • ab 1986         Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg
  • ab 1994         Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
  • 1995               graduated as master student with Gotthard Graubner,
                            lives and works in Cologne and at the
                            Raketenstation, Stiftung Insel Hombroich
  • Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
  • 2022               „Und dein Grün“,Kunstraum K634, Köln
  • 2019               Geschichte, Kopfermann Fuhrmann Stiftung, Düsseldorf
  • 2018               Lesende, Galerie Reul, Bonn
  • 2017               Tide, Kunstverein in der Kunsthalle Schweinfurt (K)
  • 2016               Horizont, Galerie Weigmann, Düsseldorf
  • 2015              Flutmarke, Galerie Reul, Bonn
  • 2021/22         Mentor in the Art Mentorship NRW
  • seit 2017       Annual teaching assignments on the subject of color, FB Architektur, Alanushochschule
  • Privat and public Collections i.a.:Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. Kunsthalle Lübeck. Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

In Correspondence

Della Gooden and Moyra Derby

RAUMX show from 28.10.2022- until Saturday 12.11.2022 Preview Thursday 27.10 – 6pm

To be in correspondence is to be in active dialogue over time, with another person. It is most often understood within the context of writing letters, where a mutual need to maintain and nourish an exchange delivers repeated response and counter response on the page. A sense of momentum between two writers might be characterised by asymmetrical flurries of activity and quieter moments when nothing is said.

This particular correspondence began in February 2022 between us: Moyra Derby and Della Gooden. It is an ongoing exchange that will continue up to, and during, the making of an exhibition at RAUMX, London at the end of October 2022. At the time of writing the exhibition is three weeks away. This booklet presents a partial record of the last 7 months, it draws on the occasions when we met in person, zoomed, texted, and emailed.

We noticed very quickly that there is a shared porousness in our practices: an openness to spatial circumstance, to architecture, a mutual sensibility for the positioning of a viewer/participant and an understanding of the duration of experience. Consequently, we also knew that we would not be taking completed works ready to hang for the exhibition. Instead, elements would need to be open to being resolved in the space, as a physical and visual continuance of our exchange; a series of moves and counter moves, back and forth between our two practices.

Della Gooden, Drawn Solid, 2022 | materials: aluminium bar, white gesso, the gallery wall, and the full architectural context. Dim. Variable

Correspondence carries a sense of equivalence and comparison, and it was clear that the correlation and interaction between worked surfaces, material objects, the parts and positioning of our works mattered. They disclosed our interest in composition, in the pictorial, in painting and its histories.

Usually there are no spectators to the creative decisions we each make in our studios but In Correspondence positions us each as a spectator to the other’s process. We are trusting each other with the unknown and unresolved aspects of a practice in progress.

Moyra Derby, Room Plan, 2022 | Installation detail from solo exhibition at Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury

When it comes to the installation of the exhibition at RAUMX this is particularly the case because we will be obliged to take on board the complexities of a social and spatial dynamic as the works start to correspond directly in the space, and are changed through that exchange. There will inevitably be turn-taking, sequential adjustments and edits, and a mutual responsiveness to the material qualities or tonality of the elements we each bring. In this process we are interested in the value of shared attention, which can open out an experience, redirect it and re-tune it.

To be in correspondence with a trusted person can offer a ‘differencing’ from the life we otherwise lead. It can be a space for collusion and revelation, for a different reality. The exhibition In Correspondence at RAUMX will be the outcome of an exchange lasting over 8 months. This project presents a challenging ‘differencing’ from the practices we each have and already know.

Moyra Derby

Moyra Derby, Painting Index: 743, 2022 | materials: acrylic on multiple laser cut panels | Dimensions: 13 x 21cm | detail from ‘grid narrative for Sophie Germain’

Born in Omagh, Northern Ireland, Moyra Derby is an artist working with painting and pictorial conventions. Her two solo exhibitions in 2022: Room Plan at Studio 3 gallery in the School of Arts and Grid Narrative for Sophie Germain, in the Sibson Building, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Kent, both mark the completion of a practice based PhD A Cut in Attention: Reimagining Attentional Capacities for Painting. Recent group exhibitions and projects include: After Bauhaus, group exhibition in response to Bauhaus Centenary, Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury, 2019; Interval [ ] slide show, Crate, Margate 2022; The Disoeuvre: Household Mix, Roseville, Ramsgate 2022; Notes on Painting II, Koppel Project Central, London 2019; Interval [ ] still: now, Tintype gallery, London 2018; Muster Station: The School of Beginnings, Tate Exchange, London 2018. Recent writing includes The Productive Inadequacy of Image for Contemporary Painting: Image Based Operations in the Work of Beth Harland, Jacqueline Humphries and R H Quaytman, in The Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts, Vol 2:1 2021; Models of Attention in the Journal of Contemporary Painting, Vol 5:1 2019; Indexing Notes on Painting, catalogue text for Notes on Painting II, London 2018.

Della Gooden

Della Gooden, One Line, One Ladder, One Painting, 2018 (installation close up) | materials: graphite ‘line 22’, the gallery roof access ladder, and the left-hand edge of Eileen Agar’s painting ‘Untitled’ 1985) | Dimensions variable,

Della Gooden lives and works in London. Her work has a commitment to and a relationship with the pictorial – even though it is often dimensional, and installation based. Recent exhibitions/projects: Thinking Thresholds, with Richard Bell, THEY COME. THEY SIT. THEY GO., London, 2022; Models & Combos, a publication 2022; The Land of Sol, Sol Space, Nouic, France, curated by Ashley West, 2021; This Year’s Model, Studio 1.1, London, 2021; The Undersides of Practice, for the APT SHOTS programme, APT Gallery, London, 2020 co-curated with Catherine Ferguson; Hard Painting x2, Phoenix Art Space, Brighton, 2020 (an ACE funded exhibition co-curated with Ian Boutell, Philip Cole, Stig Evans & Patrick O’Donnell); Temporal Objects, Saturation Point, London, 2020; The Secret Life of Stuff, ARTHOUSE1, London, 2018. Writing complements studio work and essays include, amongst others: Surface-things, for Transforming Surfaces at ARTHOUSE1 Gallery, London; Theories of the World in my Head, for Eccentric Geometric, curated by Jo McGonigal & Deb Covell; A Slice of Bright Space, for Hard Painting x2 at Phoenix Art Space, Brighton. In 2005, Della founded VINEspace, an independent project space, and then Gooden Gallery, London – at this time she developed and curated alternative platforms ‘A One Night Stand With…’ and ‘24/SEVEN’.

Shila Khatami – Daniel Sturgis – Preview Thursday 19.05.2022

During May 2022 we are showing Berlin based artist Shila Khatami and London based painter Daniel Sturgis.

Daniel Sturgis

By bringing together and combining references from art, contemporary culture, abstraction and design, Daniel Sturgis’s paintings recognise abstract painting’s contested relationship to the contemporary world. Resolutely two-dimensional, and often visually up-beat, these are paradoxical paintings that reflect on the act of making, the legacies of modernist painting, and the present-day.

Daniel Sturgis Studied Abandon_1,2021 ; 152 x 152 cm

Carefully hand-crafted in flat acrylic paint, Sturgis’s canvases use hard-edged abstraction as an arena to question the assumptions and exclusivity of abstraction. His paintings allow order and difference to happily coalesce. By interweaving ideas of opticality, movement and visual balance, Sturgis creates both formal and comic tensions. Through the use of small, coloured dots, visual layering, or by forms being representationally suggestive, these works contain strong anthropomorphic qualities. Shapes become sentient, and a visual and theoretical instability is implied.

Daniel Sturgis, Studied Abandon_2- 2021; 152×152 cm

Sturgis chose paintings from the series of Studied Abandon (2021), recognising what he describes as ‘a slight urbanism and toughness’ in their colours and graphic, layered, compositions to be in dialogue with work by Shila Khatami.

Daniel Sturgis, Studied Abandon_3_2021; 95×95 cm

www.danielsturgis.co.uk

Shila Khatami

Shila Khatami, Beinschwarz | 2022 | 250 x 180 cm | Rabbit glue, Acrylic on canvas

The interweaving of art within society is a central theme of my work. I examine the abstract vocabulary in urban space and its references to art history. I then translate these iterations of painting, back into an artistic context. 

The materials and the accompanying color palette refer back to the real life, non-artistic applications of these forms, such as a paint bomb or road damage lines. 

Loose gestures counteract the rigid geometric construction. The variety of painting in my works can be understood as a meta commentary on painting. 

In doing so, I am interested in questions immanent to the picture such as, “What is a picture?;” “How does a picture come into being?” and „From what does a picture originate?“

Shila Khatami https://www.shilakhatami.com

Shila Khatami , Anstrich22|250x180cm|rabbit skin glue on canvas

WAYS OF DRAWING

  • Stephan Baumkötter
  • Sotirakis Charalambou
  • Raymund Kaiser
  • Giulia Ricci

2022 first exhibition starts with a group show on drawing. Expansion is one characteristic of the works. It is understood as in space taking of a line, a pattern, paint and colour, or even in a truly 3 dimensional spatial way.

Stephan Baumkötter

Stephan Baumkötter, O.T.,

Repetitions, the drawings result from nothing else: Materials, a mere few formats used over and over, even the speed of the movement in drawing is relatively constant. It is always the same and it always becomes something else. Small groups of related works reveal this: Even using the same procedures and employing the same colours, this stable constellation still emerges differently again and again. By themselves, the differences come about during the process of rolling the pastel crayons, because in the act of drawing the crayon becomes deformed through gradual abrasion, and thus, its behaviour during the movement is constantly different. In this way repetition is avoided, differences necessarily present themselves and what comes about can neither be copied nor repeated. For this reason alone each of the works is an unimaginable drawing, one cannot preconceive them. And already for this fact, each of the drawings is a surprise, something unforeseen.

Jens Peter Koerver “Nothing Specific” from the Catalogue “Bethany Bottrop”

Translation: Elisabeth Volk

Stephan Baumkötter, O.T. 2019

Sotirakis Charalambou

Sotrakis Charalambou – studio shot 2022

 I hope to hang several space drawings. The works are made of fibres which are pulled into cords/strings which are arranged/drawn, fixed and suspended in open space. These types of drawings occupy space. They are multidimensional; can be viewed in the round. An extra dimension exists compared to solid sculptural forms in that they are see through. therefore they are not fixed entities. The suspended strings at once interrupt and reveal space; emptiness becoming integral. This type of work come from painterly considerations; to free colour and drawing from the restrictions of edges; the confines of rectilinear geometric flat two dimensional surfaces which become frames and isolate no matter how nonobjective the intention -windows. The Abstract Expressionist called for acknowledging the flat surface to avoid illusion of pictorial depth etc. I attempt to find ways that are not representational or conventionally sculptural. To this end l make works which have real depth in space thus are not illusions of it, of three dimensional space.  In contrast, l will show one or two drawings on paper.

Soti Charalambou. Wall piece 22 x 12 x 2.5 cm – Feb’ 2022 fibre series

Raymund Kaiser

Based on my paintings, I became preoccupied with the question what drawing represents for me . When I first transferred the contours of my paintings onto a sheet of paper they immediately became surface . When applied with a paint marker on to tracing paper, it became different. The silver surfaces reflected the light in many ways. Seen from different viewing points with the structures created by the moving contours of the marker new lively images are created despite the use of the neutral non-colour grey.

Only through ‘exposure’ the image becomes visible, like in a photograph, where after exposure through the negative the positive motif appears. Here a structure remains in motion on the silver surface. It cannot be fixed. The translucency of the tracing paper enhances this effect and makes the amorphous forms seemingly floating. That was what I was looking for. 

Raymund Kaiser, TransMark03 (220819) 2019; Lackmarker, Transparentpapier, 70 x 50 cm
Raymund Kaiser, TransMark02 (160819) 2019; Lackmarker, Transparentpapier, 70 x 50 cm

Giulia Ricci


The basic structure of my work consists of grids of isosceles right triangles. I arrange, modify and distort their configuration using repetition, rotation, mirroring and other compositional methods. The references of my practice are textiles, tiles and various other patterned man-made artefacts, on a microscopic and macroscopic scale. I am interested in the often unassuming but all-pervading presence of patterns and systems in the places we inhabit and in the objects that surround us. I create multiple focal points through the repetition of triangles within the grid structure and through the ambiguity between figure and ground. I use this strategy to elicit a tactile and spatial response from the viewer. The perception of my work can change significantly depending on the proximity from the surface; from the macroscopic forms created through modification and distortion at one level, to the discrete, quantised units at another, and finally, to the surface texture and mark-making at another.

Giulia Ricci, Orientation/Disorientation no.11; 2016
Rubber stamp archival oil based ink mono print on paper, 70x70cm
Giulia Ricci, Orientation/Disorientation no.13; 2016
Rubber stamp archival oil based ink mono print on paper, 70x70cm

Talk Lucinda Burgess and José Heerkens Friday 22.10.2021 at 18.00 GM/ 19.00 European time

RAUMX and Bartha Contemporary are inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: José Heerkens and Lucinda Burgess 
Time: Oct 22, 2021 06:00 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87907163270?pwd=VTZhb21CMTF6b3ZnMTlWY3R5UVlKdz09

Meeting ID: 879 0716 3270
Passcode: 542313

José Heerkens. 2021-L40. This Afternoon. oil on linen, 120 x 90 cm. photo Willem Kuijpers
Lucinda Burgess, Difference 2014 Mild steel, polished and rusting. Wall 300 x 16 x 9cm. Floor 240 x 16 x 3cm
Lucinda Burgess. Difference 2014 – Milled Steel; 240 x 16 x 3cmFloor

Lucinda Burgess José Heerkens Preview Thursday 21.10.2021

After the long break RAUMX is reopening during October with two artists: Netherland based José Heerkens and British artist Lucinda Burgess.

Exhibition opening Thursday 21.10.2021 running until 6.11.2021 opening times: Saturdays 2pm – 6pm and by appointment

José Heerkens. 2021-L40. This Afternoon. oil on linen, 120 x 90 cm. photo Willem Kuijpers

Both works have in common a rather minimal, reduced and meditative outlook where single elements like squares of paint or short cut metal rods define a whole. Like in a dialogue paint and natural canvas are carefully balanced in José Heerkens work. The canvas is the carrier but also an element of colour in itself.

Lucinda Burgess, Difference 2014 Mild steel, polished and rusting. Wall 300 x 16 x 9cm. Floor 240 x 16 x 3cm
Lucinda Burgess, Difference 2014 ( detail) Mild steel, polished and rusting. Wall 300 x 16 x 9cm.

In Lucinda Burgess sculptural pieces she uses materials like miled steel or glass in a very reductive, pure way, where through repetition one becomes aware of the subtle differences in each single element .

Lucinda Burgess : “I emphasize transience: the constantly changing nature of materials and the constantly changing nature of the viewer’s direct experience.

I choose materials that are capable of dramatic visual transformation: wood, steel, paper, liquid and glass. By putting these materials through the same process repeatedly, I highlight the infinite variety, unpredictability and lack of control that are so characteristic of the natural world. The use of repetition serves to underline the truth that there is no repetition in fact.

Lucinda Burgess, Seeing Straight 2016 Glass, aluminum, paper. 115 x 38.5 x 2.5cm

By incorporating natural processes such as rusting, burning or reflecting, there is an implication that change is inevitable and cannot be avoided. The requirement, for example, that mild steel be repeatedly polished in order to maintain a reflective surface accentuates the fact that nothing ever stays the same, regardless of any desire to hold it still.

Through the use of a minimalist aesthetic, the greater simplicity, geometry and uncomplicated display of materials allows the viewer to more easily appreciate change and difference at a subtle level.

Lucinda Burgess. Difference 2014 – Milled Steel; 240 x 16 x 3cmFloor

In recent work the emphasis has shifted to the ever changing nature of direct experience, as opposed to the notion of a permanently existing art object. Thus circumstance and context become integral aspects of the work. The ‘same’ thing is repeated and placed in two different situations; a threshold and a wall. The changing context affects the way in which each is perceived and experienced so that it is not the same thing in fact. Lucinda Burgess

In José Heerkens statement she writes:

José Heerkens. 2020-P68.4 Pilgrimage Thought. acrylic on cardboard, 29,7 x 21 cm. photo Willem Kuijpers

” Every painting I make is a step on a long road, a response to the intense process of looking, thinking, searching, making, discovering.
The painting process is complex: colour, form, material is directly connected with space, light, movement. It always asks that I look new and completely. 
It is in particular the colour and its exact dosage that leads me further in my search for space, for simplicity, for emptiness and form, for openness. Besides colour, which is immaterial, materials like paint, linen, cardboard, are a constant challenge.

José Heerkens. 2019-P30.5. Pilgrimage Thought. acrylic on cardboard, 29,7 x 21 cm. photo Willem Kuijpers

I work on concepts at the same time, simultaneously, and one concept can go on for several years. For example This Afternoon started in 2018 and has not yet ended. This Afternoon has its own scale. The concept Pilgrimage started in 2017 and is ongoing on linen, cardboard in different sizes and dimensions. 
The pure linen that I work on I stretch and then prepare it transparently. This makes the material and the colour of the linen an essential part of the painting and must be taken into account.

José Heerkens
September 2021

José Heerkens. 2020-L52. Passing Colours. horizontal diptych. oil on cotton and linen, 20 + 1 cm x 50 cm. photo Willem Kuijpers