Alejandra Venegas, Lumbre, 2021
In EARTH - A collective landscape (17 Sep 2023 - 16 Jun 2024) the AkzoNobel Art Foundation brings together works that focus on our natural surroundings. An opening flower in an urban garden, an almost unearthly landscape or the visible impact of man on the nature of which he is a part - all are to be found in EARTH.
Although the paintings of David Roth (1985, Austria) are purely abstract, you can lose your way in them as in a landscape. We see a midnight blue and royal blue that seem to have been applied to the canvas at great speed. A blood-red lurking behind them. A transparent black that gives the composition weight. For this painting Roth used not only conventional substances such as acrylic paint and powdered pigment, he also mixed in masses of little flower petals. In his work Roth does in-depth research into the art of painting. The creation of a painting and all that this entails are for him just as important as the result. Everything is of equal value: the painted canvas, the palette and the cloth he uses to wipe his paintbrushes. Every surface with traces of the working process can crop up in the work. Roth combines painting materials from different eras which sometimes clash, and sometimes show something completely new.
Everything writhes and moves in the works of Alejandra Venegas (1986, Mexico). We see a hand-carved wooden relief carefully painted with gouache. The studio of Venegas is situated in the mountains at the edge of Mexico City. There she conducts a dialogue with the traditional Chinese painting style Shan Sui, which translates literally as ‘mountain’ and ‘water’. With gouache or oil paint she colors hand-carved landscape scenes, chiseled from various sorts of native Mexican wood. Using an intense color palette and simple geometry, Venegas conjures up lively landscapes full of rivers and mountains, waterfalls and streams, clouds and planets. She deliberately combines the naturally warm tints of the wood with garish paint hues to sharpen the contrasts. Through the integration of the natural irregularities of the wood, the work transcends the level of a mere painted panel and acquires a pronounced sculptural quality. In this way painting, sculpture and drawing are fused together.
