If you’ve been to Camel Art Space, now Parallel Art Space,
there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Rob de Oude’s detailed, graphic and
downright illusionary paintings. Having personally spent lots of time at both
galleries, I’ve developed a healthy affection for the obsessive nature of de
Oude’s paintings, an aspect of his work that always made me suspect that he has
more than a passing relationship with OCD and / or control issues. Despite the overwhelming rigor of his
dense line work, the paintings continue to have a liveliness, due to his
unabashed love of color.
With that said, over the last four years de Oude has been
ridiculously prolific, and every time I’ve stopped by Parallel or gone to his
exhibitions, there is a little part of me that worries that I am going to grow
bored with his unwavering love of lines. But then you find yourself alone at an
opening in front of one of de Oude’s paintings, noticing that the red
horizontal lines seem to be popping. The next thing you know, you’re polling
strangers in your general proximity to ask if it’s just you or do the red
horizontal lines pop more than the others? And then you find yourself thinking
through the colors of the other horizontal lines and then the background colors
and then the spacing of the lines and the layering of the paint. Needless to
say, I find myself still very much enjoying his paintings.
At their best, they are more than formal abstractions of gimmicky
optical illusions. Instead, this is a real-time education in optics that
becomes both energizing and punishing as the lines, with a little concentration
from the viewer, start to move and undulate. It sounds like a carnival
trick, but his knack for colors that are both muted and pulsating makes the
work endlessly engaging.
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2 comments:
It's more about creating a sculptured geometric light isn't it Carl?
hmm I like that, never thought about it that way but I can definetly see it, just something about all that layering that seemed more suffocating, which for me is a strength, then airy for me.
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