Robert Zandvliet: The Painting is a Door

A major solo exhibition at the Museum Franz Gertsch presents the work of the Dutch painter Robert Zandvliet. Bringing together key groups of works created over the past 15 years, the exhibition offers a focused overview of the artist’s practice. The Painting is a Door provides insight into Zandvliet’s exploration of the space between abstraction and representation.

Robert Zandvliet is widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary painters in the Netherlands. Since the mid-1990s, his work has developed between references to observed subjects and a self-reflective approach to painting. Although his paintings often begin with identifiable motifs, his process transforms them into open, associative compositions.

The series Seven Stones (2014) plays an important role in the exhibition and is presented outside the Netherlands for the first time. In this body of work, Zandvliet concentrates on the motif of stones and approaches it with conceptual consistency. Through the act of painting, the images move away from literal depiction and instead reflect on the fundamental conditions and processes of painting itself.

Installed together in the first gallery, the works in this series are unified by a strongly reduced colour palette and a consistent visual language. From there, the exhibition continues with Paradaidha, Zandvliet’s most recent body of work. The Old Persian word “paradaidha” refers to a walled and irrigated garden, historically associated with abundance and the idea of paradise.

A selection of large-scale paintings from this series highlights the relationship between carefully structured composition and the spontaneity of the painterly process that characterizes Zandvliet’s work. The exhibition explores this dynamic through more than 30 representative works.

The exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s first major monograph, titled Monolith, published by Jap Sam Books. This book spans over 30 years of the artist’s work and is available here.