Rolf Den Dunnen

Den Dunnen has fallen under the spell of typewriters. According to him, typewriters are not only beautiful in themselves, but they carry their legendary associations of decades with them. For this exhibition this has resulted in abstract drawings in black and blue made on Olympia typewriters. This new work is inspired by the ZERO movement of the 60s and in particular Jan Schoonhoven.

“The balance, the regular, the harmony, that is the basis. And then the poetic of harmony, the balance. That parts no longer speak for themselves, but that the whole has its own life, without this being emphasized too much. ”

There is a hidden beauty in the repetition of Den Dunnens typed letters, words or signs. The repetition - and that is an important contribution from Schoonhoven - hides a grandeur, a greatness. But in the repetition there is also an alienation. By repeating the same thing, consecutively consecutively and partly overlapping the typed numbers, letters, words and signs, a coded, mysterious image is created. It is this imagined mystification that sometimes indeed reveals something "great", but at the same time also something strange or not unique, something mysterious that we do not feel completely at home with. The alienation of this work is sometimes interpreted as: religious or transcending, but not in a metaphysical sense. The work seems to be looking for a living transcendence.

Den Dunnen sees his typewriters as "machines of loving grace": from the beginning there is something human, pleasant, rich, traditional, characteristic, full of imaginative melancholy, and with a soul. This quintessence of existence, this "contemplation essence" lies hidden in the inherited memory of the species, ready to be awakened - under certain conditions - by the artist.