‘Robert Zandvliet knows how to fry an egg.’ These are the words with which Eli Content introduced the 24-year-old Zandvliet to Galerie Onrust in 1993. Content – the artist was a teacher at the academy in Kampen; Zandvliet was his student – described him as ‘someone who knows how to do things’.
Zandvliet and Galerie Onrust have now been working together for thirty years. Robert Zandvliet x Galerie Onrust: 30th Anniversary celebrates this fruitful collaboration, demonstrating, with four large works from different periods of Zandvliet’s oeuvre, how he constantly reinvents his art and yet remains true to himself.
Zandvliet made his debut with sensational paintings of everyday ‘objects’: a bus shelter, a chocolate bar, a rear-view mirror – nothing more and nothing less – which he depicted as objectively as possible. Not that bus shelter or this chocolate bar, but the object in question, isolated from reality and stripped of all frills and trimmings, in order to capture its essence. Zandvliet’s decision in 1996 to abandon this successful series came as a surprise, too. There was still so much more to discover. That year’s hairpins – object and line in one – formed the perfect transition to the landscapes that then became his primary focus, as he created various series that further explored his curiosity about brushstroke, structure and colour and their essence. Each series raised a new question, which he aimed to address in a subsequent series. For example, in I owe you the truth in painting, he looked at paintings by artists he admired. Where was the challenge in such a canvas? What were the dilemmas that these artists must have encountered? And above all: how would Zandvliet himself solve the issues? This resulted in La Tasca della Giacca, based on a work by Domenico Gnolli, a fascinating piece in which Zandvliet translates Gnolli’s meticulously painted woven fabric into subtly rhythmic prints of his block brush, turning it into a typical Zandvliet, without losing the intimacy of Gnolli’s canvas.
Meanwhile, another development was taking place. At first, Zandvliet allowed the frame of his paintings to be determined by the boundaries of the canvas, just as a film takes place within the boundaries of the screen. However, over time, the image appeared to continue beyond the canvas. The image, as Zandvliet puts it, moves ‘from screen to field’. And, as a viewer, you soon find yourself right in the middle of it. For instance, Yellow (2019) – a work in which Zandvliet explores the form in which colour can best manifest itself – the paint applied in various shades seems to continue to the left and right of the canvas. It is reminiscent of a streak of yellow left behind on your retina after a train races past. With this approach, Zandvliet straddles the line between figuration and abstraction while also playing a subtle game with the perception – because the train exists only inside your head. The same is true of Stage of Being VII (2018), a five-metre-wide canvas that brings to mind Barnett Newman’s ‘colourfield’ paintings and the vast spaces in which Caspar David Friedrich placed his figures. Stage of Being VII is like a heavenly panorama of veils, delicately applied layers of white paint that are placed, Zandvliet style, on the canvas with a roller. A living void that envelops you, a landscape without a horizon, cleaved through by a barren vacuum. While Zandvliet initially sought the essence of an object, here he seems to depict the essence of an idea. The idea of a screen, the idea of a landscape, the idea of a figure – and perhaps also the idea of what a painting can be.
And then there is Aurora (2023) from the Paradaidha series – the old Persian word for a walled garden – an atmospheric, almost mystical painting that appears to crack open and give off light, in which celestial bodies and reflections merge in a shimmering and vibrant colour field of greens and yellows that seems to transcend the canvas.
In a 2003 interview with Hans den Hartog Jager, Zandvliet explained how he has continued to acquire new skills over the years, which constantly offer him new opportunities in different combinations. Eventually, they may lead to some sort of culmination. ‘But I’m in no hurry,’ said Zandvliet, ‘if it all comes together just once in about twenty years or so’ in ‘a painting that is one thing and everything at the same time.’ Aurora is such a painting. The perfect work to celebrate this anniversary.
Esther Darley
Translation Laura Watkinson