Harmen van der Tuin
Click here for the CV & biography of Harmen van der Tuin (°1958)
After working in several styles, the last 15 years Harmen van der Tuin has increasingly focused on the essential characteristics of shape, surface, color and matter. The artist produces monochrome paintings, on different backgrounds, upon which the brushstroke becomes the subject of the piece. He eliminated all recognizable subjects in his work. And in this process in this focusing on the most essential, he has developed and sensual bolt kind of art.
His paintings become a sculpture, actually it is a painted sculpture with the tick material and the brushstroke. His works is a combination between minimalism and abstract expressionism.
The philosophy of Taoism, Buddhism, and Nonduality had a great impact on his way of perceiving, as he mentioned in his statement from 1991: “The dissolving power of art, is what really touches us. It is the revelation of the heart, which is un-manifest and is THAT, what we are. The art needs innocence to reveal that, what is most important. So, I work with being but none being is what I use.”
The content of his works withdrawals from every definition for it is not the material which is used or anecdotical content. Harmen refers to emptiness, and the works arise from emptiness. And this can only happen when the mind is in stillness when the mind is silent, and when the mind is silent there is no mind, and there is the emptiness, where the awareness is totally free and available to create.
