ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
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Hans Theys
Flippant and Restrained
Some words on Robbin Heyker
Robbin Heyker (b. 1976) is a Dutch artist living and working in Beijing and The Hague, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Art and runs the artist space Billytown with some colleagues.
His painting practice springs from the baroque tradition of rendering volume by evoking effects of light and shadow. Around 2014, however, he stepped away from the purpose to ‘render’ things or beings in the outside world and focused on making autonomous paintings: flat paintings that primarily speak of painterly matters. From which moment does one have a painting? What are the minimal requirements to be able to speak of a painting? Does one need colour? How to choose a colour? Can a painting be grey? Which grey? How many greys are there? How to compose a grey colour? How to apply the paint to the canvas? Which brush to use? Which fingers? Can we make a painting by scraping away the paint? Is it possible to create a painting following a set of rules? And if there are rules, can one cheat? When is a painting done? What constitutes the magic of a painting?
All these questions are raised and answered in a slowly constituted series of sophisticated paintings that are tricked into existence and consequently submitted to ferocious scrutiny. Few paintings survive. Many are put aside, overpainted or destroyed.
Heyker proceeds by limiting the number of colours, the ways of applying paint, the possible motivations of compositions. (The fewer the parameters, the more variation becomes visible.)
As to the colours, he mainly limited himself to the colours of whiteboard markers (or attempts to imitate them), the colours of a make-up set he once found, certain browns, greys and dark greens, colours that are part of the attire of a bird or, more recently, all the colours available in his studio but chosen randomly following the rules of a card game.
As to applying paint, Heyker developed ways to remove paint by scooping it away. Furthermore, he prefers to work swiftly, in one go, sometimes using accidents that arise from painting wet in wet. All this with an utmost precision. Each intervention is meticulously prepared. Colours are mixed diligently. Different types of paint are compared. Canvases and brushes are carefully chosen and tested.
As to the compositions, he has limited himself to the reproduction of a silhouette of a parakeet created by Daan van Golden, the repetition of A4 or A3 formats, the structure of his initials, the orderly summing up of the main colours of a certain bird (e.g. going from head to feet) or the order determined by a card game in which each of the thirteen cards is allotted one of the colours present in the studio. While doing this, he plays. The parameters are limited, but he can deviate, cheat, make fun of his own ‘system’. Tongue in cheek, he pushes the limits of painting.
To put it simply, Heyker’s development shows us the path of a catholic baroque painter discovering the temperance of protestants and the sensuality of minimalism. As such, he is a Dutch painter par excellence, following in the footsteps of artists like Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (1597-1665), Daan van Golden (1936-2017) and René Daniels (b. 1950). Internationally, his work is related to artists that have a minimal or seemingly repetitive approach. We could cite some names, but this might slow down our understanding of his completely original modus operandi.
His paintings are meticulous and meditative, but also free, joyous and comical. They are meta-paintings: concrete thoughts on the art of painting. But they also constitute a sensual celebration of life: the minutest vibrations of colours, the minutest tactile differences and the minutest shifts of compositions. Rebellious and generous, streetwise and erudite, flippant and restrained.
Montagne de Miel, 27 December 2024