In his art practice Jan ten Have pushes toward a new approach to the tension between form and matter. His new ‘paintings’, materialized amalgamations of porcelain and glass, are a sort of minimalist play at the edge of modernity. Ten Have thinks beyond the boundaries of the traditional use of matter. He brings out what is exterior to it. He sets a doctrine of materialism, in which matter always wins out over form. And it is in matter that form collapses, releasing an experience of the real as the secret of matter. New use of matter and the use of new stark forms pursue each other in the passion for the outside. That outside which is not relative to us, and which is entirely elsewhere.