NYAB Event - Cathalijn Wouters "Establishing Thought"

Cathalijn Wouters "Establishing Thought"

Witzenhausen Gallery

This event has ended.

dutch artist cathalijn wouters presents her new series of paintings at the witzenhausen gallery in new york. ‘establishing thought’ is a snapshot in time, a farewell and a starting point.

all clichés are true and all clichés about art have become such noncommittal commonplaces that it is best to avoid subjects like inspiration, creativity and being an artist. when painter cathalijn wouters says that she doesn't know what it is that she does, one is inclined to put one's finger to her lips – shhh – to tell her that silence would mean so much more here. after all, as georges braque noted, is it not this very element of the inexplicable that gives a work of art its value?

and yet i have no qualms in letting wouters speak, confident as i am that she is capable of transcending clichés and of getting to the core of this inexplicable element of value. her new works, oil and charcoal on linen, are extreme, spatial abstractions. the large transparent canvases, often 200 x 135 cm (80 x 55 inches) , depict inner landscapes where plain, simple shapes seem to double the transparency. the overwhelming emptiness in paintings like inside the white or independent correspond to colours: grimy white and grey – or pure black, double black, twice black in the turning point entitled bath (beyond the black). apart from the shapes drawn in charcoal – betraying both hesitation and fearlessness – the background is indistinct, spotted with sparingly applied muted yellow and green. it is as if wouters has erased the fullness of oil paint, since it is irrelevant. the intriguing shapes (gateways to a literal and metaphorical deepening) that she creates are like poetic containers. inside and outside of these transparent spaces, configurations loom up from the mist of the past; echoes of earlier work, forgotten form experiments, and thought balloons floating away.
the ‘establishing thought’ series opens with the painting of the same title and when wouters tells me how this painting didn't have a title for a very long time, she gradually remembers the entire creative process of this work. “in the end i chose the title establishing thought, because to me the work expresses a thought. the small grey rectangle above the container may be interpreted as a thought or as electricity. it is an energy indicating the connection between me and the work. it is something that is up in the air, and perhaps that is the essence of my work: i wish to express something that is not visible but which can nevertheless be sensed. that feeling, or that thought, is an orientation point, a key to unlock the next painting.”

she doesn't regard the emptiness in her paintings as alarming. “on the contrary. it gives air, breathing space. it also represents a longing for inner space, a search for the now, for what i call the moment, in which my head is empty and i can create without thinking. when my mind is blank, when reason is gone, the most beautiful things occur. i experience such moments especially while experimenting, while making sketches and studies. drawing and erasing. cutting and pasting. impulsive. without plan. i record these experiments in shapes and colours in both large and smaller handmade books, a few of which are also on display at the witzenhausen gallery. without those books i am nothing; they are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for my paintings.”
wouters often pastes pages from her books onto the canvas or she scribbles small sketches and notes on an empty canvas and then paints over them, forgetting all about them. they are references to a past that sometimes doesn't seem to be completely resolved in the transition to the present. in inside the white – in which the intriguing form of a transparent other world leads to a doubling of the transparency – the discerning eye may discover a small sketch of the bathtub for bath (beyond the black) accompanied by the remark ‘two kinds of black’. it is a wonderful example of wouters’ unconscious faith in serendipity, underlining the essence of her work: the urge toward inner and creative cohesion. the ‘two kinds of black’, a note long forgotten, unexpectedly but truthfully mirrors the theme of inside the white. it now seems easy to see the relationship with the overwhelming bath (beyond the black). this painting is almost a photo negative. again, we see a doubling: two kinds of black.

from the darkness of bath (beyond the black) a shape looms up that is more concrete than the logic defying containers of the brighter paintings. the shape is immediately recognisable as that of an archetypal bathtub. the form is blacker than the surrounding space, which is dusky, permitting bands of pink light. “the starting point was the shape, but the work is also influenced by the meditative feeling one may experience when lying in a bath. the bath is a place where you can let go. ultimately, the image is an abstraction. there is no narrative element. the structure of charcoal is important to me. it is like a second skin, made of velvet.”

the dramatic highlight of the exhibition consists of dialogue part i and dialogue part ii. for wouters they belong together, whereby part ii is on the left of part i and the two works obtain a common title: platform for dialogue. “by coincidence, they ended up standing next to each other in my studio. the resulting image fascinated me and for days on end i watched it with amazement. the contrast initiates a dialogue that is about much more than just the human figure and space, or light and dark.”

dialogue part ii marks the farewell (for now) to the transparent container, which has been given a more concrete shape here, almost like that of a box. here a human figure is dissolved in a watery blue indicating an unfathomable depth as it grows darker. in dialogue part i, with its earthen hues of green and brown, the shapes of human legs have detached themselves from the limiting space to freely merge into a landscape in which the image is determined by the relationship between form and colour.