Section Artists of the Gallery
* Johan Abeling *
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Landscape and Light Duets
Ask me to describe what possesses Johan Abeling and I am instantly plunged deep in thought. His paintings are like duets. Take the house in "Be right back", for example. It features in several paintings, and has done so for years. Johan Abeling is fascinated by this house. It has a personality of its own, it entertains a relationship with its creator. However, Abeling says, I have to mould it to complement the atmosphere I have in mind and am keen to paint. The direction of the light makes a vast difference. And this is where a second duet makes its appearance. It's as in the best still lifes, where the virtuosity with which objects are painted has long ceased to matter in favour of the opportunity they are opening up - again a kind of relationship - for manipulation of the light, on the surfaces of the objects themselves, in their shadows, in the remaining space. Whether the house will bow to this remains to be seen. There is always light in a landscape, and the emptier the landscape, the harder to capture it. Sometimes the house merely acts as a threshold, a temporary halt where the light briefly lingers, subsides, settles, until the elements decide that everything should change. Abeling takes over this authority from the elements. The house is given the light he evokes and dispenses in accordance with the mood he is in. In a manner of speaking, the house is his plaything: in contrast to the pattern of day-to-day nature, where the direction of the light is a firm fixture until it is decided otherwise, it is Abeling who calls the shots. Koen Nieuwendijk. |
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