Ek Het Gedroom In this 72 page catalogue you will find paintings of the last 4 years. It starts with some of the works I made at Obras (Portugal) in 2011. For 6 weeks I stayed there as an artist in residence. This period triggered some key developments. During the first 3 months of 2015 I lived and worked in Knysna, South Africa. The paintings I made were on show in several galleries over there. Again, an intense and focused working period gave my work new impulses. In ‘Ek het Gedroom’ you will see the reflections of these new developments. In between travelling I am working in my studio in Den Bosch. Continuously searching for new roads to explore. It is a never ending quest. In search of the ultimate painting? In any case looking to surprise myself with my paintings.
Arjan van Arendonk Den Bosch - November 2015
All my paintings are acrylic & silicone (& embroidery) on printed fabrics
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No begin... No End 100 x 100 cm / Private collection
The Benefits of Travelling In May 2015, while I was in the W2 Factory on a long-planned working visit to ‘s-Hertogenbosch, I got a spontaneous invitation to visit Arjan van Arendonk’s studio, which I had never been to before. On arrival, I walked in to find the walls lined with many of his most recent works, inspired by a trip to South Africa. Visually and in terms of their composition they are significantly different from Arjan van Arendonk’s earlier work. On the beautiful summer day on which I found myself in his studio, his love of painting was literally and figuratively splashed all over the studio walls. Without losing sight of the attention to quality and composition or the pictorial principles that inform his work, Arjan van Arendonk was inspired by his stay in South Africa to create exciting new works such as ‘Nobody Said It Would Be Easy’, ‘A Whiter Shade of Pearls’, ‘Escape From Reality’ and ‘Lost’. The main thing that struck me looking at his most recent work is that Arjan often almost entirely covers the printed fabric that he uses as his medium. In ‘Nobody Said It Would Be Easy’ and ‘Lost’ this results in a remarkable, layered kind of tension, with rhythmic patterns in the half-obscured background shining through the subtle, semi-transparent layer of acrylic and silicone. This creates an exciting visual dialogue between the spotless, white surface layer and the mysterious, dark background layer. Like the cherry on top of this fascinating, innovative cake, there are, analogous to the exotic butterflies in ‘Finally’ or ‘Survival of the Fittest’, embroidered or printed birds in contrasting colours. The work creates the illusionistic sense of these birds moving gracefully and purposefully at this curious interface of monochrome reality and polychrome mirage. What’s also striking is that Arjan van Arendonk abruptly cuts off the figures in his compositions at the edges of the canvas, making the worlds that are depicted, rich with floral and insect life, seem as if cut out from a greater whole. Like a cameraman, he zooms in on the subject of his attention, scrutinising it in extreme close-up. Every now and then, Arjan van Arendonk alternates a relative frugality of style with a more baroque approach. Compare the near-monochrome ‘Lost’ with the rhythmic ‘Tropical Invaders’, or ‘Prelude dans les Orchidees’, ‘Survival of the Fittest’ or ‘Welcome to the Land of Milk and Honey’ works which are so full of energy they seem about to burst off the wall. Expressive trompe l’oeil flowers, birds and insects have been painted with great feeling on top of regular patterns of floral readymade print. In his latest work, Arjan van Arendonk creates an atypical, intriguing interaction between original and copy, between reality and illusion, between nature and culture, revealing a depth of philosophical sophistication. One can only hope that his future travels will give a similar creative impetus to his surprising body of work.
Rick Vercauteren Director Museum van Bommel van Dam Venlo - September 2015
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I am too Sad to tell You 90 x 120 cm
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Cotton - Linen - Nylon 30 x 30 cm
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On... Of 40 x 40 cm cm
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What The F… 70 x 70 cm
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New Order 100 x 100 cm
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Portugese Pigments 20 x 20 cm
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Finally 85 x 120 cm
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All over Again 100 x 130 cm
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Nobody said it would be Easy 100 x 130 cm
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Conversation 155 x 120 cm
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Flores, Fiori, Flowers‌ 110 x 140 cm
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Color my Nights 50 x 50 cm
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Between You and Me 110 x 140 cm / Collection Scholt Energy
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Not all Black 70 x 70 cm
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Sitting... Waiting 120 x 120 cm
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For Vincent 40 x 50 cm
The Knysna Paintings
Arjan van Arendonk 25
The ‘Knysna-Mode’ As a dealer the process of selecting artists whom one would like to represent is possibly the most vital task one undertakes. One chooses using a variety of criteria including (obviously) aesthetics, availability, saleability in ones chosen market and whether they ‘fit in’ to your space and do not overlap with existing artists. Rarely does it happen that an artist with all the required qualities and, moreover, making work quite unlike anything I have ever seen before, arrives unbidden on my doorstep. This is exactly how Arjan and I happened to meet and ten minutes later we had agreed that he would come to Knysna from Holland and work for several months culminating in a one person show – would that all of business was so easy! The rest is history in that within a week of his arrival he knew and was dining with half the town, was playing golf and also, amazingly, was working phenomenally hard. He was, as he put it, in his ‘Knysna-mode’. Getting up early, running along the lagoon, breakfast at 7 am and putting in long hours. He was creating lovely work. The pieces also felt subtly African. The exhibition was a great success and his work is now being shown at our galleries in Cape Town, Franschhoek and Johannesburg. We are working towards his next show in the near future.
Trent Read
Knysna South Africa - September 2015
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Flowers for Fleurie 150 x 130 cm - Collection fam. Dekker Knysna
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...and lead us into Temptation 100 x 120 cm
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No ©opy 70 x 70 cm
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Hรถhere Wesen Befehlen 100 x 130 cm
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Dutch Tradition in slow Motion 130 x 130 cm
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Magical Moments in Abbotswood 180 x 130 cm
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A whiter Shade of Pearls 100 x 130 cm
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Imitation (or Not) 100 x 130 cm / Private collection
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New Order 115 x 115 cm
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To Seduce or to Be Seduced... That’s the Question 170 x 130 cm
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Natura Artis Magistra 100 x 125 cm
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Photography: Marissa Rossouw, SA
contact Knysna Fine Art gallery | gallery@finearts.co.za | finearts.co.za
A Touch of Spring 100 x 150 cm / Private collection
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Something‘s gonna Change 120 x 120 cm
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256 Roses & Counting 70 x 70 cm
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Ornament 50 x 50 cm
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Lost 70 x 70 cm
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