Red light district II Painting

1962, The Hague, The Netherlands. Eggcubism As a painter I consider eggtrays as two-and-a-half dimensional objects which offer me remarkable possibilities for imagery. The waves of the eggcartons limit the viewer's perception; they also make him aware of his positioning towards the image. The intentional limitation in subjective perception gives room for imagination and recall: the process of occlusion. By a fusion of direct and indirect perception conventional imagery is overtaken. At first sight this leads to a physical and mental incompleteness, that forces an integration which can only take place within the inner experience, apart from time and space. (compare the 'head of Janus', that looks at the present and the future congruently.) The shape of my new canvases - the eggbox structures- increases the amount of possible visual images in an almost exponential way. This forces the viewer towards an active perception, constantly changing the view-point and focus. Furthermore the true and represented space in these paintings interact during perception. One could say that the complete image just emerges sublimated in the viewers mind. Gestalt psychology states that human perception aims for completeness. Perceptions are being added subconsciously. My eggcubist works evoke conscious and dynamic adding. The objects not only refer to themselves, they also refer to each other as a series. The grid could continue between them. Furthermore the actual space in which the viewer finds himself could be part of that space and could be seen alike. In spite of the relatively small actual size of the objects, they seem to exert a surprizingly large influence on the way that the space that surrounds them is experienced. The strange shapes and unexpected deformations recall flexible tentacles. They resharpen our visual tactility.