De werken + tekst van Jan van Woensel + Dankzij Simon Kentgens (pietmondriaan.com) ook nog enkele foto's van de opening!

Muddy Disco
An introductory text about the work of Bas van den Hurk

“Stick out your tongue”, the opening song of New Wet Kojak’s 1995 self-titled album, begins with a smooth bass line instantly overpowered by a horrific, shrieking saxophone. Scott McCloud’s deep, sensual voice sings “You know, when the puzzle pieces, all fit into places, I love you baby”. New Wet Kojak is drugged-out, groovy lounge rhythms and melodies with a thin veil of early U2 that is both strange and creepy. With their loosely scattered hints of muddy rock, funky beats, seductive voice and lyrics, and jazzy smoothness, the band’s unusual and eccentric musical style reminds me of the work of Dutch painter Bas van den Hurk.

Like New Wet Kojak, Bas van den Hurk’s work doesn’t have a uniform style; he makes use of a variety of recurrent traditional and untraditional artistic elements. Whereas at first sight the artist’s paintings look like the temporary and fragmented results of an enduring investigation of the limits of abstract painting, they also offer escapades into other concepts and visual directions. Effortlessly and virtuously, Van den Hurk combines muddy paint with brightly colored scrap paper or fragile feathers, collaged fragments with lipstick, and canvas with necklaces. These combinations of media and technique offer an intriguing insight into the painter’s work and artistic research that is not as much about the end result as it is about the blend of elements, debris, fragments, impulses, sketches and thoughts. By doing this, the artist critically questions the moment upon which a painting, or any artwork, reaches its eventual state of balance or unbalance; the moment when the painter has to recognize the painting as a thing an sich, even though it will always remain something embedded in a state of uncertainty and temporality. In this way the imperfection of a painting will reveal its true perfection, and the fragility of the used mixed media will reveal the artworks’ solid constructions. In a self-written text, van den Hurk comments that his artistic process is “about working with the longing itself”. The artist refers to his two parallel but autonomous projects as “Organizing the Non-Obvious I” and “Organizing the Non-Obvious II” as events, rather than finished, definite presentations of his recent work. Like an event, his painting is a temporary and time based work, and longing is the state of mind in which the artist finds himself. This longing implies the inevitable passing of time and the gradual movement towards a certain desired fulfillment that, when finally reached, ultimately brings an end to the desire. But Bas van den Hurk chooses to creatively work with this longing, within the time and space of it, and with the feeling of not yet reaching his destination or goal. This artistic and conceptual state of conscious hesitance and restraint is of great importance in the oeuvre of the artist. On one hand, it is an oeuvre that experiments and leaves things undecided, undefined, uncommented, and unbound, and on the other hand it is rooted in a longing for an ever-postponed organization of those scattered elements, with the event (of painting) as the only alternative presentation format. This thoughtful interplay with the position, meaning and value of his paintings, but also his personal artistic process is charged with a positive potentiality, rather than a desire to traditionally define.

Bas van den Hurk’s oeuvre is one that moves in all directions, often in unpredictable manners and with sensitive attention for the non-obvious. Through this process the artist reaches the boundaries of his painterly experimentations, trying to avoid the puzzle pieces from fitting in their assumed places. By leaving things undecided, scattered and seemingly unintentional, Bas van den Hurk postpones his oeuvre constantly. He uses the uncomfortable space of longing as his resource for artworks that continue to intrigue.

Jan Van Woensel is an independent curator based in New York City, U.S.A
Text edited by Lynn Maliszewski

Femke de Vries, Remco Torenbosch, Bas van den Hurk

Cafe / Biljart Van Wou:

Koen Delaere, Wineke Gartz, Femke de Vries en Remco Torenbosch. Aan de achterste tafel: Tamara Muller en Rozemarijn Westerink

Libre met Bas van den Hurk, Steven van Grinsven en Boudie