Trained as
a classic figurative painter Verbeek’s move towards abstraction was, as she
says herself, a necessary development. The urgency of this development remains
at the heart of her work. As such, her paintings can be called explorative
transfers from abstraction into figuration. Objects morph into hairy, bubbly
surfaces, legs or arms woven into each other, silhouettes of undefined objects
floating atop each other. However spontaneous Verbeek’s flow of shapes and
figures seems, what we see is well thought out, re-cyled and re-thought for a
period of time. Shapes appear and reappear as shadows or silhouettes in new
paintings or within the same painting itself.
In Sarah
Verbeek’s work three dimensional and two dimensional forms overlap. Shapes
appear and reappear as shadows or silhouettes in new paintings or either within
the same painting itself, making it figurative in view, but abstract in
perception. Dimensions dissolve, shapes half blocking out what seems to be laid
in the painting’s background. As a matter of fact, Verbeek’s surfaces work on
several layers, flowing from background to foreground and back again. As such
they are subversively avoiding to state what is more or less important.
By doing so
Verbeek creates bouncing, energetic structures of form and color. Like all
abstract painters she creates what does not exist yet, forever avoiding to be
put into words while at the same time making complete sense.
During the
autumn of 2017, Sarah Verbeek will be artist in residence at the Mokuhanga
Innovation Laboratory at Lake Kawaguchi with the support of the Mondriaan
Fonds. The residency is designed for international artists who wish to learn
the techniques of the famous Japanese mokuhanga printmaking.
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