Images between
Every painting has to be a sort of divergent and cumulative well. The different works have to reinforce each other and have to cause “images between”. This is substantial to the imagination of the viewer.
The irony of painting
Ruud Aarts is looking for strong and fascinating images. Explicit and suggestive images which are the synthesis of a careful process of extruding ideas from everyday life. Although the contents of his work should reveal enigmatic impulses to the viewer univocity has to be avoided. The range of associations depends on the perception of the viewer. Every painting has to be a sort of divergent and cumulative well. The different works have to reinforce each other and have to cause “images between”. This is substantial to the imagination of the viewer.
His paintings become more and more psychological mirrors because the ever appearing riddles cause insecurity to the viewer; now he is vulnerable! Vulnerability is the most substantial attitude of man. But on the other hand no formal scientific method is capable of making a difference between a good or a bad perception. So, the viewer can’t make any mistakes.
On the other hand our imagination is limited because the laws of nature have stipulated our way of thinking through evolution. The way space is reflected in two dimensions urges the viewer to look with two eyes instead of one. Now the viewer becomes an observer. As an observer, who isn’t standing along the line, he turns out to be the centre of his own story. It turns out that it isn’t about painting. Depth in two dimensions literally spoken is a contradiction.
The identity of paint as such lays in its capability of adopting endless appearances. Therefore painting as an art is most difficult to broaden. That is exactly what his art is all about: choosing his own art and not what is expected. Ruud Aarts wants the viewer to realise how we look at the everyday abundance of images: and especially the commonplace of its multiplication. Paint is no press-ink or pixel. Credibility and truth are synonymous but both are univocal and oppress the alternative. It’s like a yes or no question. For certain the range of his work contents antagonisms and is contradictory. He wants his art to be indispensable. Indispensable art is ridiculous and therefore pure irony.
∼ Ruud Aarts ∼