LEVEL, installation view
LEVEL, installation view
LASSO XXIX, 2023
stainles steel, aluminium frame
62 x 44.5 cm
ACME III, 2024
plaster netting, plugs, acrylic lacquer on linen
70 x 55.5 cm
LEVEL, installation view
OPERA (PLANE) I, 2024
glitsa, stucco netting, insect screen, pencil,
rubber, plexiglass, aluminum frame
160 x 200 cm
LEVEL, installation view
LEVEL, installation view
OPERA (SPURS), 2024
glitsa, stucco netting, insect screen, pencil,
rubber, plexiglass, aluminum frame
160 x 130 cm
Century, 2024
alcyd lacquer, pencil, permanent marker, spray
paint on linen
160 x 200 cm
LEVEL, installation view
ACME II, 2024
plaster netting, acrylic lacquer on linen
130 x 100 cm
LEVEL, installation view
LEVEL, installation view
slow, 2023
rubber, pencil, netting, tape, glitsa on dibond
150 x 125.5 cm
LEVEL, installation view
OPERA (PLANE) II, 2024
glitsa, stucco netting, insect screen, pencil,
rubber, plexiglass, aluminum frame
160 x 130 cm
bis, 2024
linen, grid netting, acrylic varnish, sealant, on
stucco netting on linen
160 x 130 cm
LEVEL, installation view
LEVEL, installation view
LEVEL

What Ricardo van Eyk can do like no other artist: let opposites clash. In his approach he allows himself to be guided, on the one hand, by formal principles such as structure, construction, clarity and, on the other, by the tachist gesture, intuition, derailment, shifting, destruction. Strewn about on the floor of his studio are the traces of his chiseling of paint from the canvas all night. It brings to mind Philip Guston who, having added something to a painting at the end of a long workday, was convinced that he had ruined the entire work, only to wake up the next morning and discover that the intervention had actually made the work. That form of intuitive speculation and taking (sometimes desperate) risks is an organic part of Ricardo van Eyk’s work. He creates the image by first endlessly building it up, layer by layer, and then ‘destroying’ it. Not in anger, nor according to any sophisticated calculation, but in search of the moment at which the result can no longer be rationalized but feels, instead, simply ‘right’.

The work of Ricardo van Eyk is often considered minimalist. This association isn’t entirely unwarranted, but actually his work is rooted mainly in the practical and stylized forms of minimalism that we see all around us in the public domain. That exudes the atmosphere of industrial production in a world driven by consumption. While classic minimalism strives for objectivity, repetition and the impersonal, Van Eyk is in fact drawn to the traces of the subjective and coincidental, such as discarded illuminated advertising, the roof construction of a hangout for young people, weathered walls, doors with flaking paint, warped fences, odd stains on asphalt, graffiti. His work is imbued with his outlook on the world around us and how that world reflects the human condition.

Van Eyk often presents his paintings as part of a spatial intervention. For his third solo exhibition at the gallery, he has decided to leave out the ‘building’ and show only paintings – a presentation without an overall concept. Those recent paintings reveal a different vantage point: this time Van Eyk seems to be observing the world from above. The painting ‘OPERA (PLANE) II’, 2024, evokes associations with complex intersections in highways, magnified and seen from above, a bit like zooming in on a route in Google Maps. The painting consists of various types of netting and lacquer on which a pattern of lines and broader bands can be seen. The pieces of netting have been stretched, in layers, over a frame with plexiglas. The transparency of the plexiglas allows all traces of ‘quality of the plexiglas – to play a role as elements in the work. The result is a scintillating, almost graphic image.

The dynamics of the contrast yield a completely different result in ‘Century’, 2024: here a ‘grid’ of rectangles is the dominant structure. This grid is reminscent of the greenhouses in a region known as the Westland. Linen that has been stretched over a sheet of wood is then covered with one coat of lacquer after another. Afterwards these layers are then carved out in such a way that a regular pattern takes shape. A different, irregular pattern of loose, thin lines cuts across that grid. The chiseling of the paint results in a beautiful image of varying hues of grey, some parts with a silvery gloss and others with a matte finish. The materials react to each other and the texture of the linen pops, as it were, out of the background in cloud-like blotches. In this work, which almost has the look of an architectonic blueprint, figuration and abstraction engage in a whirling dance with each other.

No matter how you look at it, there are always parameters that determine what is considered knowledge – and what is considered art. At one time the ability to render visible reality as faithfully as possible was the reason to label an object as art. Even so, neither the craftsmanly talents of a maker, nor criteria that influenced the definition of art in other times, have been able to silence the discussion on what art actually is. And perhaps this is where we encounter something both challenging and risky: not being able to express, in words, the experience brought about by an artwork; the sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling something unusual. The fact that the notion of art remains difficult to define, that art eludes description as a form of knowledge, holds the risk of mystification, on the one hand, and of simplification on the other, as if there would be some ‘recipe’ for art. That art is a form of knowledge which, unlike scientific knowledge, ultimately focuses not on usefulness but rather on the adventure of speculation, becomes clear in LEVEL. The title, a palindrome, also suggests a symmetrical movement in its meaning: straight across time, straight across existing structures, from bottom to top, from left to right, from one diagonal to another and back again. In LEVEL Ricardo van Eyk not only gives depth to the art of painting, but he makes the underlying patterns in the experience of our surroundings visible. The clashing in LEVEL is actually about observation itself, and in that sense the presentation is an ode to the open mind.

translation: Beth O’Brien

06/09/2024 - 19/10/2024