LONDON.- GRIMM announced the UK representation of Dutch artist Robert Zandvliet, whose expressive work occupies a space between abstraction and figuration in its response to the natural world. His self-reflective practice captures the gesture of painting itself through examining the essential components of landscape, objects and colour. GRIMM will present new work by Zandvliet at Frieze London in October 2023, and in a solo presentation in the London gallery in April 2024.
Zandvliet (b. 1970, Terband, NL, based in Haarlem, NL) is an artist concerned with the combined act of observation and introspection. 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),the De Pont Museum, Tilburg (NL) and the Kunstmuseum, Bonn (DE).
Zandvliet’s approach to painting evolves gradually over time – constantly questioning, honing and expanding his understanding of an element of his practice. For example, from 2011 – 2018, the artist focused on the nuance and depth of a darker palette. Emerging from this deep study to capture the truth of his subject, he was led to begin a new series titled Le Corps de la Couleur in which he sought to investigate the essence of colour itself. Another series saw Zandvliet investigate the influence and development of art history in I owe you the truth in painting; and in Stage of Being, he invested himselfinto the question of what the figure meant in his paintings.As the artist comments, “I look to find the gaps in my knowledge, the underexposed components in my oeuvre, question these and dive into them to find new solutions.” Throughout each series, landscape returns to Zandvliet again and again, marking a consistent thread throughout his practice.
While deeply concerned with elemental subjects and the natural world, Zandvliet’s work resists realism, instead capturing and drawing attention to the artifice and painterly gesture of the work. His career has been one of constant evolution and experimentation, exploring the interplay of light and shadow, ideas around authenticity and reproduction, the materiality of the canvas and the distinct qualities of line, colour and depth to relate to landscape and space. Using landscape as a framework, his minimal approach shifts and merges foreground and background, subject and negative space, to reorient the viewer’s perception of depth and surface.
Zandvliet’s latest series explores the garden as a microcosm of nature – taking his research into the green paintings of his series of colour studies, from Le Corps de la Couleur to examine the overlapping structures of nature – grasses, trees, leaves and plants. The series is titled Paradaidha, an Old Persian word meaning ‘surrounded garden’ and also the origin of the word ‘paradise’. The new series takes the structures of nature to develop large ‘colour fields’, at once flooded with the shifting qualities of light in nature and capturing the essence of the field in its more literal sense.
Zandvliet’s paintings capture the unique qualities of light - the fleeting or distorting properties it can hold from the iridescent shimmer of light on water to the ‘Fata Morgana’ phenomenon, creating repeated images at the edge of the horizon.Building on this essence of light in his work, Zandvliet is adapting the central motif of the curved form into his new work, drawing the viewer’s eye across the canvas and capturing the movement of light across the surface as paint metamorphoses into image.
Jorg Grimm, founder of GRIMM commented: “Robert’s work articulates the act of painting and a dedication to capturing the essence of a subject in a remarkably distinct way. I’ve watched his work evolve for many years, first encountering his paintings in 1998 during his solo show at the De Pont Museum, which made a lasting impression and pointed me in the direction of becoming a gallerist years later. As a leading contemporary Dutch artist, I’m delighted to welcome Robert to GRIMM, and look forward to representing him going forward.”
Robert Zandvliet commented: “I am thrilled to join GRIMM’s international programme and look forward to exploring new horizons for my work as part of this exciting gallery.Jorg Grimm’s ambition and energy for the gallery is infectious and inspired me to take this next step.”
GRIMM represents the artist in close collaboration with Galerie Onrust in Amsterdam (NL). The artist is also represented by Peter Blum Gallery in New York, NY (US) and Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt am Main (DE).
