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This way, painter! (English)

Fragment

…………..’There is a major part for language to play in his work. Quite regularly he is using paper with preprinted texts. Words written by himself can also be an instrument at his disposal. Sometimes they are simple denotations: the date of production of the work, for example. His painting is thinking in word and image. He is an avid reader and collector. The books in his bookcase speak volumes about his affinity with other artists. It contains books by and about among others René Daniëls, Otto Egberts, Marc Mulders, Raoul De Keyser and Joseph Beuys, whose drawings Klein Hofmeijer cherishes and admires.

The masterly ‘De wijnjaren’ can also be found among them. A book about the Belgian artist Thierry De Cordier, whose similarities with Klein Hofmeijer are striking. A few years after Hans Klein Hofmeijer went into retreat and began to reflect on a future for him and art, De Cordier took a similar route. He bought an old farm in the Flemish Ardennes and spent most of his time contemplating art. With both it led to an introspective attitude. Not produce for the sake of producing, but wait and watch, keep an open mind for what is to come. Such receptive edge is in Klein Hofmeijer’s case expressed splendidly in a series of drawings of an antenna-like shape in an empty landscape.

It is an interesting roundabout route that Klein Hofmeijer has secured for himself. Everything that he says and does breathes studiousness. He himself aptly expressed the route he is taking in ‘This way painter’ from 2002. The work is painted with stain that Klein Hofmeijer has allowed to run out proceeding from a shape that resembles a stump or trunk. In this way a sort of main road is created with several side-roads and the work becomes symbolic of the artist’s method of working. It is always possible for him to leave the main road, but he will always eventually come back to it.’……………

Tekst door: Gerrit van den Hoven

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