Artist: Rezi van Lankveld
Curator: Timea Andrea lelik
November 19 – February 10, 2015
Following a thorough re- evaluation of the painting process and a continuous search for more intuitive works, the artist broke free of any possibility of narration and thus liberated her works from all remnants of concrete figuration. While the importance of the medium has remained unchanged, the figures have freed themselves from the idea of implicit unity and synchrony, and metamorphosed into varied shapes and patches of color. The surface of the painting is now purposefully interrupted and mixed into near-collages, denying utmost precision of the pictorial surface, and thus making way for expression in its purest form. Consequently, the art of painting becomes similar to a dance, building the story of a movement which refrains from any sort of recounting and aims to appeal to its viewers in a visceral manner.
RvL’s works are in constant motion, with undulating swirls reminiscent of human shapes and nature. Presented as multi-layered compositions, the viewers are invited to enter the artist’s subconscious and to experiment with psychedelic readings of the works.Each newly formed layer of paint adds a textural dimension, and accounts for the works’ strong bond with their materiality. While the general color palette employed by the artist had previously been lyrical and predominantly composed of complementary colors, this new series is in a constant quest for renewal: bold colors are freely paired on the canvases, permitting the works to attain a less curated form.
The uniqueness of these works goes far beyond their renunciation of photographically- rooted inspiration sources, and stems from their unrepeatable nature. Each canvas is the result of an intensive session of focus and concentration, where the artist is fully engaged through each step of the creational process, from start to finish. The medium’s immediacy and spontaneity require a continuous course of impromptu decision making, concluding in an unpredictable and irreproducible fusion of shapes.
The present exhibition seeks to offer a thorough overview of the artist’s new pictorial direction, looking deeply into her working process and new stylistic development. Not only will the exhibition present a highly innovative body of works, it will propose a new approach on figurative painting.
Rezi van Lankveld (born in 1973, Almelo, The Netherlands) is one of the foremost international artists from The Netherlands. A graduate of the Jan Van Eyck Art Academy, Maastricht, and Gerit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, she is well known for her paintings realized in a laborious pouring and dripping technique.
Aside from paintings, RvL also creates collages and diverse works on paper, experimenting with the physicality of the medium, combined with the expressive potential of diverse shapes and colors. She has been the subject of numerous solo shows at The Approach Gallery, London, and Fredrick Petzel Gallery, New York, and recently collaborated on a duo show with D. Braeckman: ABSOLUTE, Dirk Braeckman Rezi van Lankveld, Rue Julien Dulait, Charleroi, Belgium.
Her work was present in numerous group exhibition, such as: Inevitable Figuration: A Scene of Painting Today, Centro per l’arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy; Christopher Orr & J. Parker Valentine & Rezi Van Lankveld, The Front Room, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, USA; Back to Black, the color black in current painting, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, etc. RvL’s works are part of important public and private collections, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Rabobank Art Collection,.