Rezi van Lankveld is a young artist (born in 1973). That is still young for an artist; that is to say, it is still young for the work which, contrary to what some people seem increasingly to believe is emerging under our metropolitan skies, is not necessarily already there, palpable, tangible, fresh out of art school, like a marvellous hapax. Van Lankeld paints on small canvases (55 x 44 cm, 58 x 42 cm, 50 x 40 cm…), and this is remarkable enough to be worth noting. We see in this a sign of economy, of modesty, of a desire, so to speak, not to spread oneself too thin. Having said that, let us dispel any misunderstanding; large formats are not a sign of megalomania, certain things can only be ‘expressed’ in very, very large formats. Conversely, van Lankveld, it seems, knows exactly what she wishes to suggest (we’re getting ahead of ourselves) within modest formats. Once again, good painting has absolutely nothing to do with format. However, to quote Abbé Terasson obliquely—as mentioned by Kant in relation to books with an exponential number of pages, whose futility is inversely proportional to that number—certain paintings would be no less expressive if they were more confined in space; conversely, this inevitably dilutes the painting, a risk that would certainly seem less pronounced in more reasonable dimensions. Is this why van Lankveld chooses small formats? Not for fear of diluting her message, but because, all things considered, she may have decided that what she has to ‘say’ fits perfectly within this space? Or, more likely, has she found the ideal setting for her format? Without further ado, here’s an image:   

van Lankveld juggles representation and depiction, though he leans more towards the latter. That said, we must resist  — I can see where you’re going with this — the use of the word ‘abstraction’. Strictly speaking, it is not. For the reason long ago set out by Barnett Newman in his critique of Kandinsky’s ‘abstract paintings’, namely that Newman believed that, since one could recognise ‘objects’ from the real world in them, they were therefore not abstract painting stricto sensu. And of course Barnett was right. Similarly, since pareidolia rears its head quite quickly in van Lankveld’s paintings — and only, mind you, in this or that spot — one cannot speak of abstraction per se. On the whole, it’s rather mysterious. What is that sort of large bluish drip in the middle? Upon looking for information, we learn that van Lankveld does indeed let paint drip onto his canvases, although one suspects this cannot be the case every time (the pink-and-yellow container-like shape was certainly not produced by drips):

When I paint, I allow a lot of things to happen. I do not want to impose too much on the image as it unfolds. I do not use a sketch or anything like that in advance. A preconceived image would get in the way of my direct connection to the paint. I need the painting to keep changing once I start out, to find the right direction. In this process, I find shapes that seem uncertain about their identity. They could be this but also that – there is a dynamic quality in their appearance that I want to transmit. Often the final form of the painting comes in a flash – I see it at once. To reach that, the painting goes through a lot of stages, until the paint starts to become alive. [Jurriaan Benschop, curator, Interview with Rezi van Lankveld, here]

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it strikes me that just because a painting is small in size does not necessarily mean it has to be viewed up close. Taking this line of thought further, at the risk of taking things ‘out of context’, here, in “Absence” (2019), I see a tribute to Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid”. It is quite obvious that van Lankveld cannot paint like Vermeer, I mean, like a 17th-century painter, so she paints like a 21st-century artist. That’s quite logical. And Rembrandt would sometimes paint like Vermeer.

Let’s move on to another image taken from a painting by van Lankveld:

My first impression is that the artist turned this painting round, meaning that it was originally painted upside down. I have no evidence to support this claim, but it is nonetheless a sort of intuition (but what is intuition, anyway?):

What we are said to intuit may be objects not accessible to the senses (numbers, universals, God, etc.), or truths, and intuitions have been divided into ‘intuitions of’ in the former case and ‘intuitions that’ in the latter. [Michael Proudfoot, A.R Lacey, The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy, Fourth Edition , 2010]

As for what I’ve just speculated, we’ll call it intuition only if… And otherwise?

Q: You look for openness, but the hints of figuration are important in your work. How specific does a painting need to be for you, in order for it to “work”? Does it need a relationship with the world as you can observe it? Or could it also be a fully abstract play of forms?

A: No, not an abstract play of forms. I work towards a form of figuration that is unnameable. I think that because I want it to be many things at the same time, it cannot be one exact thing. [Benschop with van Lankveld, source above]

Next:

I have to admit (damn Barnett Newman!) that my eyes and my mind are on the lookout for pareidolia. And they find it in that tuft at the top left. See? And my mind tells me: ‘It’s a tree!’ So yes, well done! It’s a tree on top of a cliff. But what about the ‘rest’ (on the right)? What on earth is that? And here, the artist — in this case, Rezi van Lankveld — politely tells us, ‘Work it out for yourselves.’ And we realise that it’s complex, on the right. There are at least four layers. Geology? I’ve said too much. Or perhaps not enough. Let’s recall the statement already quoted: ‘I work towards an unnameable figuration.’ I’ve read hundreds of interviews with artists (nothing out of the ordinary), and I must say I’ve never read that any particular artist was seeking an ‘unnameable figuration’ (‘figuration that is unnameable’). But all things considered, it’s a fairly logical premise: this article bears witness to it, and I suppose others do too. But do we really understand the expression? The unnameable figuration… It’s almost a philosophical expression. To put it this way: it is the interweaving, the search for a balance between the possible and the impossible, the probable and the improbable, the identifiable and the unidentifiable. And indeed, is that not what painting is all about — the eternal illusion? The eternal illusion of belief in recognition.

Note that, in his question: ‘You seek openness, but figurative elements are important in your work’, it is as though Benschop were implying that figurative rendering halts the search for the image — and I emphasise ‘search within the image’ rather than ‘search for the image’; for even the smallest fragment of a painting that might be identifiable as figurative does not bring the search to an end, nor does the obviousness of the painted form, which remains nameless. And that’s the trick.

 

^Featured: Rezi van Lankveld, “Window” [Detail], 2023, oil on canvas, 55 x 48 cm, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam