Untitled Drawing

1960, GoirleReinoud van Vught is a painter to the core, and the act of painting itself has become one of his most important themes. Van Vught's development has been followed by De Pont for years. From 1994 to 1995 the artist was given the use of the large guest studio (where the auditorium now stands); the exhibition Five works on paper was held at the end of this working period. De Pont has now organized a broader exhibition of his work, including roughly forty paintings and works on paper. The emphasis lies with recent paintings, in addition to a number of key works from previous years.The painting of Reinoud van Vught is marked by great visual diversity. That applies not only to the works in relation to each other; also individually, the paintings involve a juxtaposition of different approaches and ways of painting as in a number of recent paintings, where organic shapes seem to float in a greyish blue space and are hidden from view by veil-like weaves. Van Vught's abstract fields of color have been created by countless small blotches of color that have been spattered onto the canvas. The organic shapes have been painted in a rotating movement, whereas the veil-like configuration has been brought about by white paint, applied with a flat tool that has been drawn across the canvas in a broad, forceful movement. While these works display an ethereal subtlety, others stand out by way of their pronounced materiality. With the earliest works shown in the exhibition, the paint's thick 'skin' seems to have been modelled like clay.Work from around 1990 constitutes the key to Van Vught's approach to painting. The way in which they have come about is both simple and surprising. During this period Van Vught had his studio in the attic of a former monastery in Tilburg. The statues of the Virgin Mary, crucifixes and other paraphernalia that he encountered there served as motifs. Not satisfied with his attempts at rendering these objects, however, he literally left the impression of a crucifix in the thick layer of paint on the canvas. With this gesture he demonstratively abandoned the idea that ones immediate surroundings need to be portrayed by means of a brush and paint. Since then, the qualities of the paint and the support, as well as the highly diverse ways in which these can be used, have been the point of departure for his work.