Rob De Oude

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The works of Rob de Oude, for the moment, are concerned primarily with line.  “I was a lousy painter in school, and I was interested in investigating how on earth to make a line - quite simply - straight.”
Like all things, he concluded, the problem could be solved with a formula; so he constructed a four-part ruler that he hangs on the wall - like a frame around his blank canvas - and manipulates according to “algorithms,” thereby producing a variety of compositions based on intersecting matrices. Though the rules are stringent, de Oude says he can’t predict what the application of each formula will produce visually; his process therefore allows him to “dive into the unknown.”
After years of skimming the films of pigment that accumulated on his palette, de Oude decided one day to re-purpose them, integrating them back into the system of production instead of throwing them away. He sorted them by color and assembled them into eccentric arrangements of
hue and texture, using glue to connect the layers, some curled like wood shavings, others smooth and seamless like slicks of oil.
De Oude says his goal is to ultimately “close the circuit” of creation, and to bridge mediums. The idea goes like this: these are sculptures made out of the leftover material from a painting; de Oude is currently photographing them to produce a series which is an artwork in its own right; finally, he intends to make large-scale, detailed paintings from the photographs, bringing the whole process back to its source.

EMILY NATHAN, assistant editor at Artnet Magazine

Rob de Oude’s paintings exist in the interspace between methodology and intuition, between applied mathematics and rendered curiosity. De Oude’s paintings are composed entirely through the systematic layering, at varied and formulaic intervals, of straight lines of paint across stretched canvas or wood panel. These lines, like the interwoven lattice of tapestry or a God’s Eye, intersect at various points across the picture plane. Our eye reads these random yet regularly spaced points in concert, optically contributing to the work by visually completing the forms that are suggested therein; octagons, diamonds or in the case of this current body of work, crosses and cross outs.

Enrico Gomez
Art Critic for WAGMAG