Drawing features drawings by Henri Jacobs, Marijn van Kreij, Emma Talbot, Derk Thijs and Toon Verhoef. For some, drawing is a way to put thoughts on paper unfiltered and uncontrolled; drawing as an experimental phase, as a kind of boundless thinking on paper with which drawing is often associated. Others work from a concept or an imposed framework, a need to operate freely within it. But each drawing arises in the fascinating space between direction and chance.
For years Henri Jacobs ( Zandoerle, 1957) made a daily drawing. It became a playful sampling of motifs, structures and patterns, created from a grid that he alternately confirmed or denied. In his wicker works, that structure still plays an important role. But this time it is the result of Jacob's exploration of the relationship between support and image, between two- and three-dimensionality, and between front and back. In his paperweaves of strips of colored paper, reproductions and book pages, he pairs images. For example, “Bastard Angel” is a cross between the reproduction of Dürer's angel Melencolia and Paul Klee's angel Angelus Novus. Shredded or more so, “pixelated,” they appear on both sides of the fabric. Abstract and difficult to fathom and, precisely because of this, closer to what an angel can be. Because Jacobs also plays with the rhythm of warp and weft in the process, each work is yet another exciting grid.
Marijn van Kreij (Middelrode, 1978) bases his work mostly on existing images: from works of art and cartoons to book covers and record sleeves. In his studio he studies them, sometimes drawing them over and over again to get a grip on them or combining them in collages with pieces of text. For Untitled (Philip Guston, Untitled, 1958) Van Kreij started from a drawing by Philip Guston, an image “that hangs between form and writing” and intrigues him because it is based on a representation that is no longer reducible. It could be a still life, but also a landscape or something completely different. In the process, the artist loses himself in the act of drawing itself. Van Kreij seems to explore all the possibilities in the various drawings, so that new images and patterns constantly present themselves.
In the work of Derk Thijs (Amsterdam, 1977) everything is connected. Foreground and background, space and light, man, nature and environment: they are interrelated and equal to one another. Thijs' images often escape logic, the here and now and linear perspective, offering an expanded view of reality that slowly unfolds. In one of the watercolors of his kitchen, the incoming light makes everything melt together: the cup on the tabletop, the bench and the kitchen floor, the countertop, the sink... A tranquil image in which matter seems immaterial, dissolved in sunny, flowing abstract color fields. Thijs once described his work as “searching for something closer than the verbal, searching for an image of happiness.”
For Toon Verhoef (Voorburg, 1946), paper is a sanctuary where things lose their meaning. His drawings are trains of thought in which he plays with form, color and light that he literally sneaks in there through transparent layers. In these, Verhoef allows his forms to float, collide, lean and overlap or - almost peevishly - just short of mirroring, in search of a balance at the cutting edge. Sketching is the laboratory of painting. In his drawings, that laboratory phase is visible and the artist as maker is closer than ever.
Drawing forms the basis of Emma Talbot's (Stourbridge, UK, 1969) oeuvre. What begins small and intimate on handmade paper often culminates in digital animations and extensive installations on silk. For Talbot, her drawings visualize her subconscious. They show what moves her whereby pressing issues about feminism, capitalism, technology and our dealings with nature mingle with the transcendent and irrational. In her animation You Are Not the Center (Inside the Animal Mind), she invites you to view the world from an animal perspective. Then an irresistible and almost hypnotic journey unfolds in which Talbot, through her swirling lines, encourages you to be open to the wondrous, instinctive and often incomprehensible power of nature.
Esther Darley