“A good painting isn’t an illusion of reality but a new reality,” says Han Schuil. In his new work, presented in Heat II, illusion and reality seem to merge imperceptibly. But appearances are deceiving. On the verge of becoming lost in the unfathomable depths, the viewer is constantly thrown off track by Schuil. Schuil’s motifs always remain a part of visible reality but are not intended as an illustration of this. Following the adage I don’t seek, I find – taken from Picasso – Schuil has previously incorporated fragments from comic strips, road demarcations and computer-screen graphics into his work. By isolating these visual elements, stylising them and placing them in a new context – in various layers of paint on aluminum – he has given shape, time and again, to an image of his own. Although the work is rooted in day-to-day reality, which is sometimes still partially recognisable, Schuil creates a new world with this. “There is no such thing as abstract art,” Schuil loves to declare. “But in the attempt to transcend reality, all art is abstract.”
The point of departure for works in Heat II consists of medical thermograms, photographs that show heat, as recorded with the aid of an infrared camera. Something peculiar occurs here. When Schuil zooms in on the thermogram and brings its minute details into focus in his work, the result resembles a close-up of the universe with glowing celestial bodies and luminous stars. An atmospheric image of space which is, in fact, light-years away from us and infinitely more vast than the detail that Schuil had selected. That disrupts things; it creates confusion for those who want to know what they’re seeing and where they stand. For after all, what are we actually looking at? Hovering about in this ‘universe’ are elements resembling space probes, but in reality these come from maps. As structures seen from above, from the perspective of a universe which, here in Schuil’s work, is not an actual universe. There are also rigid frames that refer to diskettedrives or computer access points.
Within Schuil’s body of work these are known visual entities to which the eye is drawn. They give rise to a sense of estrangement but heighten, in contrast with the background, the spatial effect. Sometimes they light up like big eyes in a dark surface. Or they might appear along the wide edges of the work and thus emphasize its object-like character. All of these motifs are rearranged and combined into a concentrated image that leads a life of its own, remains open to various associations and is itself, above all, vivid and convincing. They are enigmatic portrayals which, due to an attempt to avoid pure – tedious – beauty, contain some friction. You could call them figurative, since everything happens to have origins in reality, and anything but naturalistic.
“Painting brings time to a halt,” says Schuil. “It transforms reality. The decelerating and physical act of painting is essential to this.” The result is a condensation of time, an image in which various choices and decisions converge. Where Schuil’s work is concerned, that can be sensed in the precision with which he paints. By way of the hidden yet cleverly applied layers beneath, he makes colours glow. He creates patches of fog that seem to veil light and can make intense fields of color merge almost inconspicuously with diffuse twilight. He lets paint curdle into cell-like structures – again, in stark contrast to that ‘universe’ in which they appear. Schuil manages to maintain a perfect balance and control of chance and planning with giant compasses, the spray can and the sable hair brush. This leads to fascinating images that let the mind roam free: awe-inspiring and alienating images which, once they’ve captured your gaze, hold onto it much longer than the proverbial nine seconds.