Dion Johnson

Stratosphere

2020

Jan Maarten Voskuil stretches his paintings into the third dimension. His crafted, partly curved wooden constructions are based on simple geometric principles: the circle, the square, and the rectangle. He stretches the frames with linen and usually paints them in monochrome colors. With a minimum of means, he manages to develop a broad spectrum with his work whereby he partly stands in the tradition of the constructive, minimal, and concrete art of the twentieth century. His work is labeled as spatial object, sculpture, autonomous design or even architecture. He himself consistently continues to call the work painting because his frame of reference is painting. Spatial or not, “It remains paint on canvas, and deals with the limitations of the flat surface,” he argues. “Conversely, you would call Carl Andre’s work sculpture even though it’s mostly flat, wouldn’t you?” Still, there is something to be said for seeing in Voskuil not just a painter. Over the years, his ingenious stretchers have become primarily modular constructions, which can sometimes be assembled in various ways. This makes him not only a painter but also a “builder” of paintings, which brings him very close to architecture. In his latest series of works the exploration of space is accompanied by the (re)introduction of emptiness into the painting. The modules are no longer connected to each other. Although this disintegration already made its appearance in the series Dynamic Monochromes, from 2012 onwards, in the form of indentations between the modules, this in-between space is now much more thematized.