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“Triviality” is a keyword for me. The important and the inconsequential are interchangeable. No moral phenomena, not even a moral explanation of phenomena. Once you’ve established this, nihilism is just around the corner, and this is precisely what you observe all around you.
For me, embracing triviality also means wanting to see what you are not supposed to see: a longing that may stem from the fact that the world in which we live does not (always) tally with our desires. Painting then becomes the creation of space for those desires.
In my case, my Calvinist background entails a worldview dominated by Christian morality, of “are you really allowed to think what you like?” The concept of guilt and atonement makes me an easy prey for anyone appealing to my “bad conscience”.
For example, the human nude is trivial. In my opinion, it’s no coincidence that the nude is a recurring theme in the history of art. Tainted by assumptions, for me nudity opens up the violent relationship that we have with the surrounding world.
Therefore, I find that painting involves creating space: for the shadows within us, for the world of desires dogged by fear, for the world of excitement and loathing. However, it lacks the usual media veils that (in my eyes) conceal more than they reveal because they represent “the world” rather than paint it on the basis of who we are. This can be confrontational, but I also know that the purchasers and collectors of my work do not avoid that world.
The “triviality” that I’m aiming for, is something that has generated both wars and inventions. So it’s no wonder that we distrust this power.
Where “triviality” is the keyword, “depiction” is the motive.
A number of years ago, I began to look for a classical, less charged counterpart to human anatomy. As my starting point, I took an extremely dull piece of woodland where I was intending to create an intriguing image through the way in which it was depicted. At that point a colleague commented: “I wouldn’t want to walk through those woods”. I always felt that this remark was significant because, whereas for human anatomy I needed the depiction’s drama to achieve my intended objective, here - by working on a few innocent trees - I was able to reveal something entirely different: the violence of the act of depicting, and the way in which that violence engorges itself on our inner world that has no idea about how to deal with the world outside.
So it’s not about the depiction, it’s about the act of depicting.
This depicting can reveal an original violence, just as music also enables us to experience that. Do not underestimate the potential of the circular movement: the duster, the Stanley knife, a flannel with warm water, the pools of water with a dab of pigment, the contour lines of paint that divide the watery surfaces like dikes and yield new marks at fracture points. In short, all this and more benefits the artist.
To enhance the unpredictable, many years ago I began working with watercolours, where I allowed large puddles of watercolour “to do the work themselves”. This entailed a faith in materials and an alternative idea of talent that rejects the somewhat academic notion of the talented hand in favour of a belief in choices. These choices - no matter how erratic they may seem - appear to be controlled, but more by feeling than by knowledge…
The offset plate was incorporated into the process in the same way. At the end of 2006, I was asked “to create a large painting on aluminium, zinc or tin”. So I went to a scrap yard to look at all kinds of different metals and ended up with the offset plate. While aluminium provides a natural base for my glued strata of painted paper and its reflective layer involves daylight (which intensifies the object’s presence as the logical opposite of film projection), for me it above all entails the constant discovery of new possibilities such as painting in watercolours on the offset plate, a material that actively rejects water…

CUTTING TABLE

2007
acrylic paint on aluminium
150 x 200 cm.

cutting table II

2008
acrylic paint on paper and aluminium
150 x 200 cm.

androgyn

2008
acrylic paint on aluminium
60 x 90

RON MUECKS BIG BABY IS A GIRL

2008
paint on aluminium
140 x 112 cm.

young girl in silver chair

2008
acrylic paint on aluminium
190 x 140 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

nude

2008
acrylic paint on aluminium
140 x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

Birth of A Face IV

2009
watercolor on aluminium
80 x 120 cm.

forest building

2008
acrylic paint and tape on aluminium
150 x 200 cm.

mother and child

2009
acrylic paint on paper
100 x 120 cm.

out of the orange coloured sky

2009
watercolor on aluminium
80 x 110 cm.

digital solitude I

2009
watercolor and tape on aluminium
150 x 200 cm.

The Silence

2009
watercolor and tape on aluminium
100 x 120 cm.

GALLOWSVEN

2009
watercolor on paper and aluminium
260 x 470 cm.

REED

2009
watercolor on aluminium
450 x 550 cm.

after the blast

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

BLAST

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 x 190 cm.(55,12 x 74,80 inch)

GAS CHAMBER

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 cm. x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

clouds

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 x 190 cm.(55,12 x 74,80 inch)

champagne

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 x 190 cm.(55,12 x 74,80 inch)

glacier

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 cm. x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

bunker

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 cm. x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

big glass

2009
140 cm. x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

reclining nude

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 x 190 cm.(55,12 x 74,80 inch)

swamp

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 cm. x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)

mean bias

2009
watercolor on aluminium
140 cm. x 190 cm. (55,12 x 74,80 inch)