Vincent van de Waal | Always a Part of Me | 5 December 2021 — 12 January 2022
formulated by Vincent van de Waal, Guillaume Schmidt and Gabriel Rolt
Press:
Het Parool Newspaper by Edo Dijksterhuis, 6 December 2021
Art Events News November 30, 2021 Vincent van de Waal’s paintings hit the glance immediately. Simple, unpretentious, direct. Made in a minimal style, the depicted scenes are displays of the everyday, urban representations of anonymous lives. The extreme simplicity of lines and the playful use of colors remind of a formal language employed in typical tales of the city, like in Jacob Lawrence’s ‘The migration series’, where cartoon -like figures tell the story of a collectivity, the story of people trying to fit in. The colors on the canvases become thicker on the hands and faces of the depicted subjects: layer upon layer the stratification of acrylic paint creates a colorful conglomeration, a collage, that becomes their own personal world. Each with their own, the protagonists of the everyday are unbothered by our presence, entering situations of daily life with their individual wishes, desires and fantasies. Alternating depictions of single individuals with representations of small groups of people, often reminiscent of neighborhood youth, the peculiarity of the series in its totality lies in the general sense of peaceful solitude that it delivers.
Vincent van de Waal, What a man supposed to do?, Acrylics on canvas , 70 x 70 cm, 2021 Whether it’s a self portrait with a friend (we keep flying hand in hand), a stranger staring at a choice (The doubt), or an absurd scene of ordinary madness (what a man supposed to do?) the overall feeling is the one of acceptance: a kind, sympathetic recognition of the world for what it truly is, without the filter of illusions. Simple in its deepness, the act of reception remains the same wether it encounters a stranger or a familiar face, in a fearless and peaceful act of surrender. The solitary ground of the everyday is walked by van de Waal with no fear, with the serenity of someone who is ready to embrace the unpredictable, which, somehow, always manages to shimmer through.
Vincent van de Waal, It was an unfair fight, Acrylics on canvas, 100 x 140cm, 2020 Vincent van de Waal (1981) lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated in 2006 at the Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam at the graphic department and afterwards developed a career as illustrator, designer and graphic designer. Since 2011 he is the creative director of Patta, an Amsterdam based streetwear label, and parallely develops his own artistic projects that range from paintings, graphic prints, to music, or poetry based work. Recognizable from his versatility of mediums and his direct and uncut style, his works are now shown in national and international venues.
Visit the show at Mauritskade 55C, 1092 AD Amsterdam, Nederland from December 5th, 2021 until January 12th, 2022 / Open Saturdays and Sundays from 13 to 17 hrs.
Text by Sara van Bussel