Squaring the Circle

About

Annesas Appel’s works are inspired by systems such as maps, music notations, and the alphabet. Like these mathematicians, she deconstructs and reinterprets existing systems according to her own rules. For example, her series ‘Duetten in kleur’ (Duets in colour) reorganises the seven colours of the rainbow by weaving them together, two by two, in all possible combinations. In View on the World Map, she extracts, separates, eliminates, measures, adds and re-interprets projections of the world map, ending up in visual works of a different kind and in a different media.  Annesas often uses squares and grids as well as printing, weaving, and embroidery. These techniques permit visual and conceptual clarity, but by combining different layers, they often result in an iridescent surface, like changeant silk. Presenting visual, tactile, and kinetic qualities, the outcome of her research offers another perspective on what we know.

Kees Visser reinterprets the heritage of modern art, combining the languages of Mondriaan, De Stijl, and Matisse into a personal research into form and colour. For example, by introducing a diagonal edge to his paintings, Visser combines a form dear to Richard Serra with painterly experiments reminiscent of Yves Klein. He often uses the framework of a grid to determine the shape of his paintings, which is never exactly rectangular. The pattern of the grid returns in his paper weavings. He uses this technique to alter pages of art history books, transforming the image of a readymade by Duchamp into an abstract composition with multiple squares.

While they can be mistaken for abstract compositions, Kuno Grommers’ works feature an actual space, his studio, whose walls have been entirely painted. Weeks of careful arrangement are condensed into a single photograph, in which two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality intertwine. The actual space is deconstructed into a flat image, where the illusion of depth is sometimes recreated. The trompe-l’oeil works so perfectly that the straight edges of the studio seamlessly blend into any shape. At times, the cube turns into a curved composition. Squaring the circle, ‘sphering the cube?’

Composition, the placing of visual or sonic material, is the starting point of Zoë d’Hont. Trained as a classical pianist and as an artist, she became interested in systems of notation (especially musical ones, in the case of a music sheet). Rather than breaking free from a set of rules or asserting her own, she is interested in the interstice between an established framework and the freedom left to the interpreter. Some of her works are inspired by the patterns of sound frequencies and oscillate between a scientifically determined schema and her own intuition. In other works, she uses traditional embroidery techniques and comes to a personal interpretation through patient reenactment. Rejecting romantic authorship, Zoë is interested in the moment when, after having been endlessly repeated, a square naturally turns into a circle.

In the works of Milah van Zuilen, the square stands for human presence within a natural environment. Being also a forest ecologist in training, she observes, collects, and classifies leaves, cuts them into squares, and reassembles them into larger compositions. She proceeds systematically and assigns herself rules, such as collecting leaves from a specific genus. Other times, she plays with chance and keeps with the order in which she encountered the leaves during a walk. Scientific typologies and intuition are used as equally valid methods, preventing the artist from making arbitrary choices in order to let the material speak for itself. In this way, the nerves and patterns of the leaves are enhanced, and what could appear to be a severe composition is transformed into a poetic, almost soothing picture. 

Jan Maarten Voskuil makes spatial paintings. His constructions are based on basic geometric shapes (squares, circles, rectangles), which he spans on curved stretchers and paints in monochrome colours. As his paintings acquire a third dimension, an element of illusion complicates his visual vocabulary. Shapes are not what they appear to be, and what looks like a composition with nine squares turns out to be a composition with nine circles. Each work invites close observation beyond the immediate appeal of its shape and colour. This mind-bending result is achieved through careful sketches and mathematical calculations—an interest in research that the previous artists share.