Erik Oldenhof: "The power of minimal"

June 6th - June 27th, 2024 from Tuesday to Thursday
from 3.00pm to 7.30pm
opening June 6th  / 6.30pm
Atelier Balderi
Archivio Iginio Balderi, via Ausonio 20 – Milano
archivio@iginiobalderi.org
@archivioiginiobalderi

From 6 June 2024, in collaboration with the Dutch foundation Galerie Conny van Kasteel, the exhibition by Dutch artist Erik Oldenhof will open in the Atelier Balderi exhibition space of the Iginio Balderi Archive in Milan: "The power of minimal" curated by Ivo Balderi
On display is a selection of more than twenty large and small format paintings.

E_AJ42 - 2015 - Acrilico su linee - 80x80cm 

Erik Oldenhof: Text - Wim van der Beek

Erik Oldenhof, (Nijmegen 1951) is a painter who applies the power of limitation in his way of painting.

Simplicity is the hallmark of the true.

He focuses entirely on the pursuit of maximum painterly efficiency with a minimum of visual resources. Characteristic of his paintings is the pasty painted interplay of lines that falls over the canvas like a veil.
Erik Oldenhof has been making monochrome paintings in white but also red, blue and black since 2004.
His quest in painting is mainly in the use of the many nuances in the color white.
White is the color with which he can start again and again, from scratch.
These monochrome paintings are painted wet on wet in three different layers.
He uses wide and narrow brushes and spatula alternately while painting.
In addition to a wooden spatula to draw traces in the paint, he has also recently used tape.
This tape is removed in opposite directions from the paint stroke, creating an optical rhythmic effect in the paint skin that gives a special tension to the painting.
Each painting is a step in his search for what painting means to him.
Not only the painting but also painting itself is a way of being, for Erik Oldenhof.
Starting over again and again, in search of the essential and the pure, that is his motivation.
The illusion of infinity of lines gives the work a spiritual, religious effect.
Erik Oldenhof transcends this because he pursues the universal.
Erik Oldenhof’s color white and the lines he draws are not the color and line of existing logic but of the limitlessness of our existence.
It may be beautiful, it may shine with color. In short, his paintings give ample scope to beauty.

AN7 - 2019 - Acrilico su linee - 90x120 cm

“Light, space, and silence” - Text: Marijke van Oppen.

Erik Oldenhof was born in Nijmegen in 1951 and spent his youth in the village of Mook.
He made his first painting at the age of 15, inspired by the aunt who gave him painting materials.
He first came to know art through his father’s collection, which consisted of landscape paintings by the painters of the Plasmolen School who were active in Mook between 1940-1950.
His earliest memories are of his father’s laundry. The neatly arranged stacks of pressed and folded napkins, and the white linens on zinc tables left an imprint on him which is visible in his most recent paintings. Traces of the past that subconsciously make their way in paint and canvas.
As a child, Erik Oldenhof was a dreamer. One of his dreams was to become an architect. Architecture at that time, mainly in the Bauhaus style with its abstract geometric patterns, is noticeable in the paintings of his youth.
In the 70’s he studied architecture in Nijmegen and worked for a number of practicing architects. The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, with its collection of works by Piet Mondriaan and Bart van der Leck, as well as the works of Wladyslaw Strzeminiski opened his eyes to the grand tradition of abstract painting.
He traveled to Rome, Florence, Paris and Madrid to study art history, then continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam in order to sharpen his skills.
The period after his matriculation was spent experimenting in his new studio in Amsterdam. He created landscapes, figure studies and the first abstract paintings. Oldenhof was greatly inspired by the highlights and structure in landscapes.
Through the years his work had become more and more abstract, with any remaining landscape references disappearing in the process. This resulted in a 1988-1989 series of black and red monochromes, as he became inspired by ZERO and Minimal Art.
It was clear from the very beginning that he would become an abstract painter. His background in graphics and his architectural training have played a vital role in the development of his work.
From here, a period of radical reduction of visuals ensued. For the past twenty years, the works of Erik Oldenhof have been discerned by the many tints of white. The sensory observations of the paintings’ structures have become an important factor. The stillness that his paintings exude forces the observer into a certain focus. He’s searching for, in his own words, something untouchable in order to achieve a super sensual spark of the immaterial.
Erik Oldenhof queries classical painting elements such as rhythm, lines, light repetition and shadow play. He boldly dissects a way to these questions’ answers.
For Oldenhof, the color white attests to the stillness and pure energy of light, and the illusion of space. His work is directed, free from coincidence, the solutions clear and convincing, but there’s always room for further research. The sweltering lines in his monochromes function as musical chords.
His paintings invite the viewer to surrender to the emotional and psychological aspects of the ever-changing. He strives to deliver a visionary form of beauty, space and silence to the viewer. Oldenhof is an artist who chooses his own path, and hones in on the visual with his precise, calculated mastery of the materials.
With this approach, he connects the contemporary and  timeless to each other in his paintings, and successfully converts the hypothermic into a passionate warmth.

Berlin Drawings (2018-2023)

Disegni di Berlino - 2024 - 29,7x40cm

From 2018 to 2023, Erik Oldenhof worked during the summer months in a studio in Berlin, located in Frohnau, a place in the Reinickendorf district of Berlin located in a wooded area. The Berlin drawings originated in this secluded area of peace and quiet.
Before leaving for Berlin, he had made the decision to limit his choice of materials and technique. He chose brushes and India ink, and ink pens to work on paper size A3. This limitation in drawing materials and paper size allowed him to focus with full concentration, creating his own inner world.
The serene place with overwhelming nature and the white sheet of paper as a challenge. As in his paintings, Erik Oldenhof seeks a minimal form of abstraction through a radical reduction of pictorial means.
While studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (1974-1977), it was teacher-graphic artist Ap Sok who motivated him to make woodcuts in black and white. Thus, many woodcuts of landscapes and abstract composition emerged during that period. At the Rijksacademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (1975-1979), he drew numerous portrait and figure studies in Siberian chalk from observation. It was here that he developed a taste for working in black and white.
In his 40-year career as an artist, he further developed and refined drawing. These Berlin Drawings use two approaches to the motif. The brush drawings and secondly the drawings with ink pens drawn on strips of diluted India ink. The drawings can be serene and minimal or complex and playful with a transparent character. Influences of Minimal Art, Zero Art and concrete art are visible. A brush drawing can consist of a single brush stroke or a succession of brush strokes of black ink. In this way, Erik Oldenhof playfully confronts the viewer. His brush drawings are sensitive abstractions reminiscent of Japanese calligraphy.
Black is an important colour in the history of visual art, think of Kazimir Malevich's black square, who called his black square -The Face of God-. Black suggests an endless compressed depth of energy and warmth.
Erik Oldenhof goes by his intuition when he draws; hand and eye are in dialogue with the white sheet of paper. For him, drawing is a synthesis of distance and his view of the world of the unobservable. For a successful drawing, several versions are made, an ink drawing cannot be improved; only the successful drawing remains after careful selection, repetition is memory, is improvement.
All drawings are made in a frame, leaving a white border around the image. In this way, Erik Oldenhof creates a field of tension between drawing and the space around it. With great determination, he balances between writing and drawing, structures emerge it is a search between contrast, balance and tension. Shapes dance across the sheet of paper like musical notes. Within these inexhaustible variations, he searches for something incorporeal, a visionary form of beauty.
The transparent drawings combined with ink pens, forces him to ask questions, to reflect on the act of drawing per drawing. Here too, he follows the self-imposed limitation, frame, transparent ink strips and pens of different thicknesses.
The use of pressure-sensitive pens creates subtle modulations in linework. It is a dialogue between linework and ink fields until the drawing vibrates with an architectural spaciousness. Geometric shapes are given their place in the grid of underlaying transparent ink bands that give an arrangement.
These Berlin Drawings are a guided train of thought preceded by a long process that is never linear. For Erik Oldenhof, every successful drawing is a new reality.
Amsterdam, February 2023