Theun Govers, Untitled, 2019, 30 cm x 37,5 cm, Acrylics on wooden panel
In his works Theun Govers (*1976 Eindhoven, NL) renders unsettling shapes and planes that convey curious dimensions in unknown yet palpable locations. Angles which seemingly fit together eventually part ways to form interiors that beg to have their spaces investigated and explored. At times the architectures of Govers’ works are reminiscent of a high-definition, yet unrendered video game environment. There are crisp edges and vectored formations that begin and end, but never quite seem to come together in a logical arrangement. Forms yield their interior spaces with a mystifying quality of changing optical vantage points and can make the viewer feel pushed back and forth with an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of effect. Govers’ compositions often echo formations akin to a Penrose triangle or another impossible geometric structure that cannot exist inside Euclidean space.
In his painting style he creates and then irons-out the problems of dimension in a continual fashion of ‘solving’ space whilst still conjuring an enigmatic quality of scope through the build-up and removal of paint. Captivated with the formation of surface textures, Govers’ constructs eerily decaying environments, sometimes showing traces of a previous work as an ambiguous recall to former conceptions. Overlapping lacquers on rustic shades opposed by their simple and clean surface lines highlight a reassuringly smooth yet alarming color palette. Spoiled greens and decayed browns are ornamented by blushing pink forms in delightful garish proximity to one another. Often he uses the kinds of patterns and motifs that one could imagine on some late 60’s wallpaper disintegrating inside an abandoned cabin. Motifs and objects reappear in his paintings, recalling and conversing with each other in a bewitching blur of reality. Variegated skies and backgrounds evoke a transparency grid which Govers’ painstakingly creates using many layers and strips of tape. At times the paint is so meticulously composed that the surfaces inside suddenly take on the appearance of convincing objects or wall panels that exist in the real world. It’s an unsettling and disconcerting environment that Govers’ generates and unfolds to the viewer.
text: Cybil Scott
The complex form structure works of the Polish artist Natalia Zaluska (*1984 in Krakau, PL) are the result of her reflection of her own sense of space and the confrontation with the surrounding structures and circumstances. There are innumerable studies of perception that pick up what is perceived, abstract it and condense it.
On the base of a rectangle, Zaluska always uses a wide variety of materials. Starting with geometric basic figures, she creates extraordinary compositions that seem almost inexhaustible in their variation. With a certain radicality, even brutality, Natalia Zaluska creates fractures, notches, cracks that leeds to a strong dynamic within the work. The spectrum of colors in the works tends strongly to pure monochromy, but also here are always strongly contrasted, colored lines, or small colored areas, which maintain the balance of the composition. The dominating deep black or white color areas contribute to an immense depth of the work. Gaps within these surfaces open up new spaces and show the complexity of the process of creation.
Natalia Zaluska follows her very own logic, to bring forms together, to cut them back in time by incisions and cracks. It recalls a never ending cycle in which the artist moves. A new work is being created, partly destroyed in the following, in order to create further fragmentary forms, which are integrated into the already existing form landscape.