Erik Oldenhof - Broft Gallery Leerdam - acrylic paint on paper - abstract composition - framed

• Artist: Erik Oldenhof (Nijmegen, 1951)
• Medium: acrylic paint on canvas
• Date: 1996
• Signed: bottom left front
• In very good condition
• Titled: "ZT"
• Frame size 51.5 x 81.5 cm
  

Erik Oldenhof (Nijmegen, 1951) Anyone paying close attention will quickly spot the vibrant emotion in Erik Oldenhof's work. But not immediately. After all, simplicity is the strength of the Amsterdam artist. In his line paintings, he strives to achieve maximum artistic output with minimal means. This power of limitation has been demonstrated before, such as in Minimal Art and Fundamental Painting of the 1960s and 1970s. However, Oldenhof takes a significant step further. If you take the trouble to get under the skin of his paintings, you will see that his focus on the artistic process is characteristic of all his work. Every painting must be read. In the compositions of recent paintings, connections can be found with early graphic work and with his training as an architectural draftsman. In the use of color, references are discernible to the work the artist used to do in his father's laundromat. In canvases where the thickness of the horizontal lines varies, landscape connotations are obvious. His paintings are about the process of painting: overpainting, adding and omitting, surface and depth, light and shadow, drawing traces and causing deviations, creating order and the deliberate disruption thereof. From a distance, Oldenhof’s canvases appear to consist merely of strict, lawful, and rational line structures. But up close, the canvases shimmer and vibrate exuberantly with their thick layers of paint. Irregularities and ragged edges underscore that the abstract forms were created not by a machine, but by a human being of flesh and blood.

(source: ArtZaanstad)