ZANDER BLOM – NEW WORKS
2017-07-10Blom’s sustained explorations into the developments of abstraction in twentieth century Modernist art movements have, until now, resulted in a diverse range of strictly nonfigurative experiments in painting, most recently taking the form of geometric and minimalist abstraction. This exhibition of new work marks an important point of departure for Blom as the figurative elements from his drawing practices have entered the realm of his paintings for the first time, symbolizing a critical disengagement with pure abstraction.
At the center of this exhibition is a large format installation of pages torn from old Mondrian catalogues and defaced with Blom’s drawings of dinosaurs, aliens and other childishly rebellious icons. Writing in Blom’s second catalogué raisonne, Nicola Trezzi considers how these drawings allow one to really understand the complex and contradictory nature of his art: ‘If Blom’s paintings can be considered his ‘representation’, affirming his position, as a painter, as an artist, to the world, his drawings are his ‘will’, the thing behind the veil, the magmatic truth, the lava beneath our terrestrial crust.’
These iconoclastic scribbles, which animate Blom’s Piet Mondrian drawings, have now moved across to his paintings, to deface his ordered geometric abstractions, and to question his own approach to painting. For Trezzi, this is a taste of Blom’s ‘bestial modernity’, a desire ‘to make works that take modernity to its ultimate state, which is, despite its premises, wild, animalistic, primal and instinctive’. These paintings of ‘bestial modernity’ are shown alongside his characteristic abstractions of oil on raw Belgian linen, with his signature technique of making painting that look digitally rendered.
Exhibition runs through to September 2nd, 2017
Galerie Hans Mayer
Grabbeplatz 2
40213 Düsseldorf
Germany
