Rob de Oude “Unison”

McKenzie Fine Art

[Image: Rob de Oude "Unison" (2022) oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in.]

This event has ended.

McKenzie Fine Art presents the new year with an exhibition of recent abstract paintings by Rob de Oude, in his second solo outing with the gallery.

Rob de Oude creates his patterned geometric oil paintings through a process of repeating and overlapping bands of color in a grid formation. His precise and optically vibrant compositions are never computer generated; rather, they are patiently crafted entirely by hand, through a slow and careful cumulative process. Working in a square format ranging from 12 to 72 inches, de Oude uses a specially designed rig that allows him to render his colored lines straight and evenly spaced, with their width determined by the choice of brush. His colors, as well as their translucency and opacity, are modulated through careful mixture and varying density of application. The resultant paintings are luminous, possessing subtly shifting color, shifting depth and volume, and most remarkably, a mysterious and atmospherically glowing inner light.

As de Oude notes:

Each line crosses the surface, entering and exiting the work in a rhythmic buildup of fading or amplifying hues, producing, in unison, a harmony where the sum becomes more than its parts…These new works employ structure-based methods to create soft, amorphous shifts, glows and contrasts, with sometimes illusionistic, perceptual or pareidolic phenomena that are derived from the painting process, as opposed to fully formed, preconceived notions. Colors, gradations and color shifts are mixed on the spot. Once a painted layer is finished it is put aside for drying, during which there is time to contemplate new color combinations and color shifts. It is all a pretty fluid and intuitive process.

Rob de Oude (b. 1970, Den Helder, Netherlands) studied painting, sculpture, and art history at the Hoge School voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam and attended graduate school at SUNY Purchase, NY. He settled permanently in New York in 1997, and his paintings have been exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe for the past thirty years. De Oude’s work has been featured in ARTnews, The New Criterion, Artnet, and L Magazine, among others. The artist maintains a studio in Brooklyn and he is a founding member and co-director of the Bushwick gallery Transmitter.