ROBERT ZANDVLIET

As an artist concerned with the combined act of observationand introspection, Zandvliet has dedicated his career to a deepunderstanding of the elements and foundations of painting,constantly honing his knowledge of his practice. This newseries builds on Zandvliet’s decades-long fascination withthe landscape as a framework to explore and understandthe world, building on the legacy of Dutch landscape paintingthrough his distinctive lens.

For Zandvliet’s first exhibition in the UK with GRIMM, he hasdeveloped a series of imagined landscapes that break downthe archetype of his subject – a field, a moonrise, an emptyroad, a willow tree. These motifs echo art historical fragments,captured with an economic and gestural brushstroke thathighlight the abstraction of the landscape into shape, form, lightand shadow. The compositions balance the immediacy of theviewer’s experience with the slower resolution of the influence,ideas and history that underline the world of Zandvliet’spainting. His minimal approach shifts and merges foregroundand background, subject and negative space, to reorient theviewer’s perception of depth and surface.

Though nature acts as a catalyst for Zandvliet’s painting, theartist resists the impulse to translate the natural world througha realistic perspective. Instead, he deconstructs the elements ofnature to their essence, seeking to capture what he describesas ’an idea of landscape’. The resulting works fuse abstractand representational elements to reframe our perspective ofthe natural world. For Pink Moon, Zandvliet has experimentedwith scale and texture, adding oil to his egg tempera works toanimate the surface of the painting.

Another expansion of his practice are two-large scale vividly colored monotypes. Allowing for the chance and serendipity of the medium, Zandvliet sets a horizon on the plate and creates a world from this foundation.

Over the course of nearly thirty years, Zandvliet has presented his work across Europe and the US and been the subject of major solo exhibitions with the Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL), De Pont Museum, Tilburg (NL) and the Kunstmuseum, Bonn (DE).