Jan Maarten Voskuil

Thank you to Mike for introducing me to this beautiful work by Jan Maarten Voskuil. These are selections from two shows: Grip-No Grip and There Is No Point. I had a hard time selecting what to include in this post, check out his site to see more of his work. 

Here is an excerpt from an interview with HUH. magazine based out of the UK:

"Do you call the pieces you hang on walls paintings or sculptures? 

They are paintings. As sculptures they suck.

Why do they suck as sculptures? 
They are paintings because that is what they are about. They are linen on stretchers with a little paint on, and they are about surface. In mathematics there is even a name for the kind of curved surface I make. They are called 'minimal surface'. I didn't know this at the beginning but I ran into the term a couple of years ago. Of course you can call them sculptures (about painting). I don't mind people to call it or interpret it differently than me, actually most people do. As a naturalistic painter many years ago I used to state that I wanted to prove the world was flat instead of round. Maybe now I state that painting is round instead of flat and of course nobody agrees.

You've had a lot of shows in recent years, does this affect your work? 
It has two sides. Pressure makes cooking quicker and it's also exhausting. When I started curving the canvas 12 years ago I thought it was a statement one can do only once. For a couple of years I occasionally returned to this curving because I found some new way of doing it. Strangely, every work generates more than one idea or direction for new works, so, in the meantime I can see that I will be occupied with this practice for a pretty long time. I have better equipment and skills in the process now, so I can keep up a little with the demand, but it becomes critical and assistance is not really an option, because it does take skill to make these things. You are right that I also have to (re)consider the pace I am working at the moment. Take some time to reflect on things. Although I do reflect all the time actually."