The road winds as through a labyrinth and you have to stay focused and alert. You do not find Paul Smulders’ studio without directions. It is hidden in the northern part of Amsterdam, surrounded by houseboats, newly build town houses, factories and abandoned buildings. The old industrial area has kept its rough character, but as the city is expanding, it has become fashionable in its own anarchistic way, and is now a popular area to live for the modern urban nomad. Each morning Smulders bikes from his apartment in central Amsterdam to the small ferry that transports pedestrians and bicyclists to the northern part of the city, and to his studio.
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Paul Smulders
Untitled C2011.A01 Acrylic/oil paint on canvas 200 x 180 cm |
“Curiosity plays an important role in my daily existence as a visual artist. Sometimes my studio looks like a laboratory and the way I work as an artist can be compared to an alchemist, studying and experimenting with new materials or to examine how all kinds of paints, lacquers, and pigments react with one another. It invites me to explore the unknown and unexpected qualities of painting materials that were designed, produced and meant for construction industry or mass consumption. These painting materials open new possibilities compared to the more traditional ones, and they play an important and decisive role in how the skin of my work look. It gives me scope and flexibility to play with new differences between the consistency of paint, transparency, tone, linear drawing, colour balance and space.”
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Paul Smulders
Untitled C2011.C01 Acrylic/Oil paint/transferprint on canvas 150 x 200 cm |
As the youngest of eight children by academic parents, it was expected of Paul Smulders that he would study for a classic academic degree. He moved from his hometown Breda to Amsterdam, where he began his studies at the department of History. After a year he changed to Akadamie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and in 1987 when he had finished his studies, he continued in Italy at the La Nuova Accademia delle Bell’Arti di Milano where he studied one year as a post-graduate. Since then he has had numerous exhibitions all over the world.
The human being
A certain motif has dominated his paintings since his studies at the academy in the 1980s. It is the human being in all its facets. At the academy, the study of the human body could stretch over three weeks, with one drawing and one nude model. However, the drawing was not the essential outcome from this course, but it was the thorough knowledge of every muscle and bone in the human body. He knows it by heart and it becomes vivid in the latest collection.
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Paul Smulders
Untitled C2011.C03 Acrylic/Oil paint/transferprint on canvas 080 x 150 cm |
“I have started to draw again at the paintings, and by using a syringe I can make very loose drawings. I cannot fully control the amount of paint that floats out, which means that I end up with a line that is very similar to an etching.
In several of his works from the 90s, there are almost scientific studies of the human body in motion at the canvas, and there are clear references to the photographer Edward Muybridge’s works, who was one of the pioneers within the field of photography and later on with the movie as well. But Paul Smulders watched the people that he met every day on the street and on the ferry on his way to the studio, and made close-ups of faces painted out of his memory. The human being is still a central motif in Smulders’ paintings, but it is more a depiction of the human being in general.
“The human figures in my work play an important, but relatively anonymous role. Some are painted in details, vague, as silhouettes or built up in pixels, but they all seem to wander around in unknown surroundings. Most of the time they do not have any direct contact with each other, but they try to cope with the seemingly new surroundings.
I am interested in the fact that the contemporary human being is alienated more and more from his natural origin. This is not a critical note or a global disaster, but more a progress of humanity. The consequence of this development is that the distance between people becomes wider in daily life, and communication is digitalized. Apart from that, it is possible that technology will enter our bodies literally and take over physiological processes. Maybe I do not even exaggerate by suggesting that within 200 years from now a post- human period will start, in which the human physical nature will play a less significant role. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. These thoughts, however, have nothing to do with science fiction or defeatism, but are more reflection about how people deal with new developments and what might become of humanity later on.”
Between chaos and order
If the viewer is looking for guidance in the titles to interpret the artwork there is not much help to find, the titles are all Untitled followed by numbers that indicates the year and month the work was made. Nevertheless, Smulders kindly invites the viewer to an enjoyable romp activating visual and intellectual senses. The alchemist challenges all sorts of different materials at the canvas and the painting grows from the abstract formations and elements. He has a clear sense of direction, but at the same time, the process is clearly intuitive, removing and adding elements during the act of creation. It is a constant search for equilibrium between chaos and order.
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Paul Smulders
Untitled C2012.A01 Acrylic/Oil paint on canvas 180 x 500 cm |
Smulders has a large archive of visual materials that he uses in the paintings. Daily he finds images in newspapers, magazines or at the internet to his collection. In the first place, it is not the motif that is the most important, but it is the rhythm in the image. Paul Smulders finds a large photo of a swarm of grasshoppers and points at the space in between the small insects,
“It was this rhythm I found interesting. When I choose to use it in a painting it enables me to experiment and investigate how material and image relate and reinforce one another.”
He transfers the computerized image to the canvas using a relatively simple method. And images of urbane settings, insects, gene strings, printed circuit boards, or city maps create odd landscapes, or complex puzzles, that indicate a fascinating narrative skill, arisen from an undisguised interest in the surrounding society, which are sampled and communicated through an expressive imagery language.
Traces in time
Ornamented flowers and leaves with references dating back to the 18th century botanic drawings, wind over some of the paintings’ tactile surfaces to maintain the balance and perhaps soften up the more dramatic motifs. The references are diverse but one of the figures that reoccur is Ikaros. According to the Greek myth, Ikaros was trapped in a labyrinth. He succeeded to escape using a pair of wings made of wax that his father had fashioned for him. Despite the warnings, Ikaros flew too close to the sun, his wings melted and he fell into the sea. The figures in Smulders’ imagery world wander through labyrinthine surroundings. The Labyrinth motif occurs in numerous works, in the shape of x-rays of the brain with its tortuous shape, or printed circuit boards that draw the attention to a city map with its fine lines that branch off and form treacherous mazes. Man and science mutate to a complex organic unity.
Smulders is constantly seeking to keep the irrational and rational in equilibrium, and on his way through the labyrinth, there are still uncountable ways to explore. © RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA
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