Modern Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of paintings by René Daniëls, his third with the gallery. The seven paintings, most of which have never been exhibited, span the formative period of 1980 to 1984, prior to and prefiguring the development of his signature ‘bowtie’ motif. Early works from this period are mainly figurative, notably loose in brushwork, and made up of several layers often revealing traces of underpaintings. Superimposed figures appear as dreamlike apparitions, floating over the canvas and dissolving into inanimate objects. Together this body of work shows how Daniëls used mysticism, ceremonial rituals, as well as woodland and jungle environments as iconography to probe the lexicons of art history and mechanisms of the art market.
Art itself has been the subject of his paintings throughout his oeuvre; what defines an artwork, how it is interpreted, exhibited – and most poignantly – how it is assigned value. Daniëls often worked cyclically, returning to certain compositions repeatedly, changing small details with each new work. Every iteration shows him ushering his subjects’ transition toward an unknown destination. His urge for transformation is especially evident in De fontein in Afrika, a painting he reworked after it was originally exhibited in 1984. The outline of a giraffe is overlayed by the pattern of its skin; only visible in the brown segments left translucent. The painting fuses different perspectives: the foreground with the background, and the sign with its interpretation. He found “objects and ideas always appear twice, once as a reality and later as the idea for a work.” These foundational paintings give insight into an artist who sought to refine his pictorial language through developing an interconnected web of double entendres and multilingual puns.
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