Rudy Lanjouw

Stories of paint. Abstract art is painted language. But can it also tell a story? When we first encounter the abstract work of Rudy Lanjouw, we see hard, sharply defined areas of color in a measured composition against an almost white background structure with black speckles and smudges. So cerebral that you suspect it is purely about color, structure and composition. But just as color can be emotion, Rudy Lanjouw's work is about more. The titles of his work already suggest this, as in the painting 'Reminder' shown here. The hard blue shimmers less from the canvas, disappearing a bit into the background or ground, like a diminuendo in a musical composition. As if it invites you to go into the depths with it. The painter seems to be telling two stories, that of the background and that of the color areas and the tension between them. And look, in another painting something red is very subtly shimmering through in the background. More of a trace than a brushstroke, as if it emerges from the painting. Rudy Lanjouw builds up his work in layers and then every now and then something from the underground bubbles to the surface.

'I feel like an archeologist,' says Rudy Lanjouw. 'An archaeologist of traces whose meaning is not clear. Sometimes it has everything to do with rhythm, as in the work of Cy Twombly.' The speckles could just be notes in a score, the sharply cut areas of color reminiscent of sound. As in "Reminder," the volume of blue sounds somewhat muted.

The artist lives and works on the northern edge of Assen, in a rich archeological area of old cart tracks, remains of prehistoric habitation, imprints of vanished farms, and a stream valley. An excavated Roman treasure in his hometown of Beilen awakened his fascination for soil stratification over time. In his studio, for example, hangs a map of the Balloërveld. On it you can see all the surfaces, speckles, lines, former watercourses and a tank trench indicated. Then you immediately understand what his work is about, where the title of his new exhibition comes from: 'Traces of traces.' So his abstract paintings do indeed tell a story. They are not illustrations to an archaeological narrative, they form the story itself, not as a collection of anecdotes, but as the universal story of the stratification of things. Translated into an idiom all its own.

Eric Bos