【上海·外滩】 ‘1.65’ — 雷诺·奥德霍恩Reinoud Oudshoorn中国首个展2022.10.29 – 2022.12.25

The Magic of Mist
雾的魔力

镜头掠过贫瘠的山脊和沙地。地表在太阳强烈地照射下，似乎成了古老的粉红色。眼前景色在刺眼的光线下一动也不动。广阔山谷中的静谧被巨大的岩层守护着，这些岩层随着时间的推移被侵蚀成不规则的形状，将景色切割成不同视角，一个连着一个，有的彷佛身置其中，有的则是全景，像是身处巨大沙堡中的房间。拨动吉他发出的尖锐、呜咽忧郁的音乐伴随着图像飞速地切换着，而当镜头对准空旷的沙漠中间的一个人物时，画面就静止了。

一部电影是无数静止图像的串连，有些图像埋藏在我们的记忆中，有些则消失得无影无踪。尔后，任何一位看过电影的人都会建构一个属于自己的电影。维姆文德斯（Wim Wenders）所执导的经典电影「巴黎，德州」（1984），是 Reinoud Oudshoorn 最喜欢的电影之一，在开场时就创造了无数的图像和视觉体验。对Reinoud Oudshoorn 来说，镜头的影像，从近景和远景的交替展现了沙漠的广阔，是一种崇高的空间体验。

Reinoud Oudshoorn 工作室的墙面上挂着一件于 2005 年创作，一个由水平"直角"组成的无题作品，作品的两个短边被磨成了一个半圆与嵌入的磨砂玻璃。站在作品前，透着玻璃看过去，如一个回形针的形状，而藉由一个消失在透视中的暗影，体现了一个大框架里小小的回声。你的视觉因此被拉至深处，进入一个虚空世界中，成就一个矛盾联想的舞台。
汽车后视镜的图像若隐若现。镜子中映出的过往印象链接了另一个记忆，一个关于车内封闭空间的实体体验，它是周围风景中一个独立存在的个体，沿途一个沿着一个地穿过，掠过一道又一道空间，不论是从汽车、林地或到建筑。但记忆不是完整的，随着影像从镜子中渐渐消失，视线再次回到大框架里看向小椭圆形中的空洞，它仍然悬挂在透视笼罩的玻璃中、在铁制细节中、在基本简单的形式美中，彷佛是一种寂静的降临于图像上。画面中的三维空间被不知不觉地转移到一个个人所属的想象空间。图像已经变成一个载体，一个媒介。

「在空间体验中被引领」是 Reinoud Oudshoorn 作品中的一个主题。正如 Reinoud Oudshoorn 在他的工作室中解释，他的雕塑成形过程中总是从：注视着一个白色的表面、一张纸或一堵空白的墙开始。由于高强度的注视，白色的墙从二维表面变为立体三维状态的那一刻，它同时创造了一个具有意识的可能性。这种凝视与观察因此产生了新的想法，也使过往尚未成形的计划、尚未找到解答的形式、格式和体积、材料与技术循环上有所进步发展。新作品的轮廓是从白色的虚空中与艺术家的经验交叉融合后萃取的结晶。这就是无形的、非物质的东西成为物质的方式。

在研究白墙创作的力量来源与可能性的过程中，我们发现有一段来自于艺术家童年的记忆。Reinoud Oudshoorn 的童年是在 Ommen 附近的一个乡村庄园里度过的，在这个广阔的地方，他可以独自在田野和树林中无休止地游荡。他最喜欢在浓雾笼罩大地的时候散步。这不仅创造了一种低沈的静默，还有着一种虚空，以及因自己幻想出的画面填补这虚空寂静的兴奋感。这与在作品上，我们可以扩张空间的体验感有关，而这种体验会随着画面的扩散变得更加强烈。雾就像是一个安全的毯子，守护了这个不被打扰的幻觉。

Reinoud Oudshoorn 在 18 岁左右看到了 Barnett Newman 的作品展览。在阿姆斯特丹 Stedelijk 博物馆举办的回顾展令他大开眼界：像 Cathedra 这件画作，其宽敞的空间、强烈的蓝色和旁边的白色带状线条，让人目不暇接。「就像你可以走入画中一样。对我来说，那是一个起点。」

三维空间、透视、对和谐的渴望以及对经典透视法则的迷恋，这些因素对 Reinoud Oudshoorn 的创作中扮演了重要角色。离开高中后，他选择在恩斯赫德（Enschede）的艺术和工业学院学习。他的才华获得了肯定，但一年半后，他感觉看够了而搬到了伊比萨岛（Ibiza,），在岛中央的一个小房子里居住数月，希望藉由日复一日沈浸于创作中而有所启发。为了赚取生活费，他在闲暇时间清洗私人游泳池。近一年后，Reinoud Oudshoorn 决定返回荷兰。通过画家卢卡森（Lucassen），他被哈勒姆的 "63 工作室"（Ateliers ’63）录取，在那里他遇到了安苏亚布洛姆（Ansuya Blom）、伊莱康特（Eli Content）以及后来的埃里克安德烈斯（Erik Andriesse）、玛琳杜马斯（Marlene Dumas）和利奥弗罗金德韦伊（Leo Vroegindeweij）。Oudshoorn 在这里找到一种被真诚对待的归属感。大家对作品进行了批判性的讨论，并建立了终生的友谊。 在"63 工作室"最后一次展出之后，Oudshoorn 搬到了阿姆斯特丹。而他为 63 工作室最后一个项目展出的作品获得阿姆斯特丹 Stedelijk 博物馆的邀请，Oudshoorn 因此参加他们 1976 年的展览「11 位画家」。
(Marlene Dumas)和利奧弗羅金德韋伊(Leo Vroegindeweij)。 Oudshoorn 在這 裡找到一種被真誠對待的歸屬感。大家對作品進行了批判性的討論，並建立了終生的友誼。 在”63 工作室”最後一次展出之後，Oudshoorn 搬到了阿姆斯特丹。而他為 63 工作室最後一個項目展出的作品獲得阿姆斯特丹 Stedelijk 博物館的邀請，Oudshoorn 因此參加他們 1976 年的展覽「11 位畫家」。

1970 年代后期，雷诺.奥德霍恩受到了 Jan Roeland、Ad Dekkers、Ben Akkerman 和 Carel Visser 以及 Elsworth Kelly 作品的启发他越来越多地开始设计雕塑，先是伴随着绘画一同创作，但他最终搁置了颜料和画笔。”绘画导致了太多的幻觉，”他解释说。"我希望我的作品更有形。对我来说，我的工作是在二维和三维之间。绘画是太多的幻觉或欺骗，而雕塑是太多的障碍。我想在观众的物理元素和空间之间创造一座桥梁。一件作品产生的空间必须大于它所消耗的空间。我使用源自绘画幻觉语言的透视，并将透视的潜力应用于我的雕塑。这样，我试图在平面的幻觉空间和三维雕塑的具体现实之间建立一座桥梁"。

Oudshoorn 的早期作品之一是 1990 年的一件无题作品，由阿姆斯特丹的犹太历史博物馆收藏。这件垂直作品由铅覆盖的木头制成，由四个独立的形式构成，放置于彼此间隔且接近的距离，外观是一个正方形，而里面是一个圆形的轮廓。四个角扬升至四个高点，比人还高。这种垂直方向给人感觉到：这四点所包含空间的内部实际上也永远在延续，在空中蔓延。这件作品与 Oudshoorn 早期的绘画作品和 Barnett Newman 和其他美国画家，包括埃尔斯沃斯凯利（Elsworth Kelly）和马克罗斯科（Mark Rothko）作品的空间体验有直接连结。观众可以看到这件雕塑轮廓是对巴内特纽曼（Barnett Newman）画中之画带的直接演绎。更具意义的是将图像或雕塑作为一个字面意义上的载体。

近期的作品探讨关于灭点。因为雕塑的实体体验对 Oudshoorn 来说非常重要，他想方设法让他的观众感觉到他们被融入在整体的空间中，被融入在可见世界背后的世界中。灭点在Oudshoorn 的作品中总是设定在 1.65 米的高度，这与他年轻时经历的迷雾相同，激起那种神奇的、永无止境的无穷感觉。在他的工作室或其他地方展示他的作品时，很明显地，奥德霍恩以许多不同的方式定位消失点。他总是展示不同形式的作品，例如，与地面接触的雕塑与悬挂的雕塑在一起，2007 年的一件无名作品就是如此，包括一条靠在墙上的铁质曲线，被涂成深色的钢灰色。曲线的角度变化，随着曲线宽阔、平展的两端接近观众而按比例增加，这是由于雕塑实际上有两个消失点的结果。一个是把眼睛向下拉，拉到深处，另一个是消失在墙上，在眼睛的高度，在曲线的最高点之上。

「如果你站在雕塑前面，你会知道这一切真的发生在视平线。 你的感觉就像你站在海滩上，当你看向远方时，你仍然可以看到海浪在你的眼角移动。这给人一种迷失方向的感觉」。此外，每件雕塑都需要观众的移动。从侧面看这些雕塑，不仅可以清楚地看到它们的构造，还会产生线条与体积和形式的对比。

Reinoud Oudshoorn 的工作方法是非常精确的。当他坐在工作室时，墙壁或一张白纸就成了他的起点。然后，他画一些小草图，在这些草图中，他试验了雕塑的基本形式圆形和椭圆。他喜欢在粉红色的方形纸上画画，因为随着时间的推移，粉红色会褪去，变成漂亮的各种色调，所以每幅画都会有自己的颜色。当草图产生了要进一步发展，成为雕塑的形式时，Oudshoorn 就开始按照最终雕塑的尺寸画全图。这些是令人着迷的白纸，在这些白纸上，连同雕塑的草图，他写了无数的，似乎形成了痴迷的数列：几何学与椭圆的计算。

“人们经常问我对数学是否有着执着迷恋与狂热，但对我来说，数学只是一种工具。如同美学是一种工具一样、就像努力追求技术上的完美是我工作中的一个必要因素一样。但它本身不是一个目标，因为「匠人精神」这个意义上并不引起我的兴趣。我开始在我的图纸上写下这些公式，因为如果我不这样做，我会忘记它们。我在艺术作品中最想要的是强度和完整性。专注对我来说不是一门学科。它是从迷恋与狂热中生长出来的。如此一来，我也藉此领悟了我与世界的关系了。”

根据安伯托·艾柯在《美的历史》中的说法：在古希腊，哲学家苏格拉底开始讨论「万物的开端是什么」的问题之时，是要找到「世界作为一个有序的整体，遵循单一规律的定义」。希腊人将世界视为形式，而形式等同于美。毕达哥拉斯后来在宇宙学、数学、自然史和美学之间建立了不可分割的关系。他是第一个说万物之始是数字的人。对 Oudshoorn 来说，伴随他绘画的计算只是一个过程，然而这些有序的系列唤起了毕达哥拉斯人学派对无限和对记忆中无法追踪之物边界的神圣敬畏。

“我对所有涉及使用透视的问题都甚感兴趣。如果你看一下透视的发展，你会发现居中透视是一个尴尬的现象。只要设想到在海滩上，发现看到的地平线不是一条直线，而为了确定那个空间，我们所学的是中心观点。我对这种经验娴熟于心。例如，在地板上的雕塑与曲线（上面提到）。当你站在一个大圆的边缘，你无法完全看到它，因为它的边缘在你的视线之外，所以你会经验到一个拋物线。我对这些形式有一种巨大的迷恋。我并不试图做出有吸引力的绘画或雕塑，我试图以某种方式掌握一些东西，为了做到这一点，我需要这种精确性。一旦雕塑的形式决定后，材料的选择也随之而来。每一种形式的建构，就像是支持每个形式的建筑一般，都有着支持它自己的元素材料。如铁可以参考石墨铅笔。木材也是令人感兴趣的，因为它的纹理和材料的温暖特性，让人有想触摸的感觉。而我在选择时就会考虑到了所有这些因素。”

鉴于他对空间性和透视度的偏好，在他的玻璃、铁的雕塑中尤其明显。Reinoud Oudshoorn 延续了一个荷兰悠久的艺术传统－绘画之源。玻璃经常被认为是形而上和沈思的象征，一方面是因为玻璃的清晰度，另一方面是因为它的神秘性。这个因素在Reinoud Oudshoorn 雕塑的空间质量中完美地产生了。在这些雕塑中，不同种类的哑光玻璃，内含于铁中，共同构成了一个建筑。正如 Jan Hoet 曾经说过的，"与玻璃有关的透视性正与蒙德里安画派吻合。蒙德里安绘画中的白色像玻璃，几乎像水一样。它有一种风景的质感"。Reinoud Oudshoorn 的作品也属于这种传统，即追求结构的清晰和连贯性。对透视的偏爱来自于深度的思虑感知，也是为了避免既定的边界和框架。

这一点在 Oudshoorn 一件作品（无题）中表现得很清楚。”我在玩云的概念，不断变化膨胀的一个形式。我想制作玻璃泡沫，会涵盖空间本身而位移，但也创造新的空间。这个墙面雕塑让人联想到一个光学仪器，比如眼科医生会使用的开阖复杂镜片。它是由三个不同格式的圆圈组成的，在一个较大的圆圈中包含另一个内圈，在它后面的又是相同形式的回声，现在是一个较小的、渐进的视角。这些由铁制成的圆圈，上面焊接着玻璃，而不同圆圈之间的关系始终是相同的。”Oudshoorn 想要以运动和多重性解释三个圆圈。因为「三」是多个物体的最低数字，圆圈为我们提供了一层地薄雾，而铁的颜色和质地使圆圈上的孔看起来像石墨，使雕塑有一种无休止的作图感。这种结构使较小的形式以恰到好处的方式漂浮在其他表面的背后，强调了阴影部分。三个圆圈外线的厚度是以这种：非平面、强调透视轮廓与保留了铁的质感而选择的。 这也是一件玩弄幻觉和三维空间的雕塑。我成为了一个雕塑家，"Reinoud Oudshoorn 喃喃自语，"但也许我仍然是那个寻找魔法的画家。

Pietje Tegenbosch 皮耶杰·泰根博斯

皮耶杰·泰根博斯(Pietje Tegenbosch)为艺术史学家与艺评家，荷兰人民报《de Volkskrant》 和 《Het Parool》日报的自由撰稿人。亦为荷兰银行艺术基金会顾问与 董事会成员。2009 年，Tegenbosch 与合作伙伴 Martin van Vreden 于阿姆斯特丹成 立 Tegenboschvanvreden 画廊，经营国际当代艺术项目与表演讲座。

The Magic of Mist
The Work of Reinoud Oudshoorn

The camera glides over bare mountain ridges and sandy plains. Punished by the sun, the earth seems an ancient pink. The landscape lies motionless in the blistering light. The stillness in the vast valleys is guarded by giant rock formations eroded over time into irregular shapes that divide the landscape into different compartments, one after the other, complete with passageways and panoramic views, like rooms in a sand castle of superhuman dimensions. The shrill, whining blues sounds of a slide guitar accompany the birdlike flight of the images, which come to a stop as the lens focuses on a figure in the middle of the empty expanse of the desert.

A film is a succession of countless still images. Some of these images nestle themselves into our memory. Others disappear into obscurity. After the fact, anyone who has watched a film constructs a film of his own. The opening scene of what has since become a classic, Paris Texas (1984) by Wim Wenders, one of Reinoud Oudshoorn’s favourite films, is characteristic in generating numerous images and experiences. For Oudshoorn, the camera’s images, which alternate from showing the immensity of the desert from up close and then from far away, is a sublime experience of spaciousness.

Hanging on the wall in Reinoud Oudshoorn’s studio is an untitled work from 2005, made up of a horizontal ‘right angle’ whose two short sides are rounded off into a semicircle into which matte glass has been worked. Standing in front of the work, you look through the glass, shaped like a paperclip, by way of a dark shadow that disappears into perspective, into a smaller echo of the larger form. Your eye is pulled into the depth, into an emptiness that proves a stage for contradictory associations.

The image of the rear view mirror of a car looms up. The reflection of passing impressions in mirrors like this are linked to a different memory, that of the physical experience of the enclosed character of the car itself, a selfcontained volume within the landscape around it, a capsule that skims along other capsules, shaves past other spaces, whether they are automobiles, woodlands or buildings. But the memory is incomplete, and as the image vanishes from the mirror and the eye once again looks
from the large form back to the emptiness in the small oval form, it remains hanging in the shrouded transparency of the glass, in the living details of the iron, in the beauty of the basic simplicity of form, as a silence descends across the image. The threedimensionality in the image is imperceptibly transported into a space for one’s own imagining. The image has become a vehicle, an intermediary.

Being carried along in the experience of space is a leitmotif in the work of Reinoud Oudshoorn. The process in which his sculptures take shape, as Oudshoorn explains in his studio, invariably begins with staring at a white surface, a piece of paper or an empty white wall. Because of the intensity of looking at it, at the moment this white surface of the wall alters from a surface into a state, it creates a consciousness of enormous potential. That staring and looking results in tapping into new ideas, as well as further development in older sculptures, on plans not yet developed and the recycling of forms, formats and volumes, materials and techniques not yet completely worked through. The contours of a new work are extracted from the crossfertilization of the white emptiness and the experiences of the artist. This is how the intangible, the immaterial, becomes material.

In the discovery of the power and the possibilities of a white surface lies a memory from the artist’s childhood Reinoud Oudshoornspent his childhood on a country estate near Ommen, an expansive area where he could wander alone, endlessly, through the fields and woods. He enjoyed walking most when a thick mist lay over the land. It not only created a muffled silence, but it also meant a kind of emptiness and the excitement of filling that emptiness with his own fantasies, thoughts and images. ‘It has to do with the fact that we can experience space as something larger and that this experience becomes more intense as an image becomes more diffuse. The illusion is not disturbed. Mist is a safe blanket.’

When he was about 18, Oudshoorn saw an exhibition of work by Barnett Newman. The retrospective at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum was an eyeopener. ‘The spaciousness in a painting like Cathedra, its intense blue and that white band next to it, was overwhelming. You could walk into the painting, as it were. For me, that was a starting point.’

Threedimensional space, transparency, a desire for harmony and a fascination for the classic rules of perspective are ingredients that would later play a major role in the work of Reinoud Oudshoorn. On leaving high school, he chose to study at the Academy for Art and Industry in Enschede. His talent was recognized, but after a year and a half, he had seen enough and moved to Ibiza, where he lived for some months in a small house in the middle of the island, hoping to discover what it meant to be occupied with art day in, day out. To earn his keep, he cleaned private swimming pools in his spare time. After nearly a year, Oudshoorn decided to return to the Netherlands. Through the painter Lucassen, he was accepted at Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem, where he met Ansuya Blom, Eli Content and later, Erik Andriesse, Marlene Dumas and Leo Vroegindeweij. Oudshoorn had the feeling here that he had found a place where he was taken seriously. There were critical discussions about the work and lifelong friendships were forged. After his final presentation at Ateliers ’63, Oudshoorn moved to Amsterdam. The work he exhibited for his final project resulted in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum inviting Oudshoorn to take part in their 1976 exhibition, 11 Painters.

In the late 1970s – a period when Reinoud Oudshoorn was inspired by the work of Jan Roeland, Ad Dekkers, Ben Akkerman and Carel Visser, as well as Elsworth Kelly – he increasingly began making sculptures, first alongside his painting, but he eventually set aside paint and brush. ‘Painting became too much illusion,’ he explains. ‘I wanted my work to be more physical. For me, my work is between the twodimensional and the threedimensional. Painting is too much illusion or deception, and a sculpture is too much of an obstacle. I wanted to create a bridge between the physical element of the viewer and the space. A work must produce more space than it consumes. I use perspective, derived from the illusionary language of painting, and apply the potential of perspective to my sculptures. That way, I try to create a bridge between the spatial illusion of the flat surface and the concrete reality of the threedimensional sculpture.’

One of Oudshoorn’s earlier works is an untitled piece from 1990, purchased by the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. The vertical work, made of wood covered with lead, is constructed from four independent forms that are placed with as little space as possible separating them, forming the contours of a square on the outside and a circle on the inside. The four corners rise to four tall points, higher than a man. This vertical orientation gives the feeling that the interior of the space contained by the four points actually also continues forever, up in the air. This work has a direct connection to the early paintings and the spatial experience that Oudshoorn had with the work of Barnett Newman and other American painters, including Elsworth Kelly and Mark Rothko. One can see the contours of that sculpture as a direct translation of the painted band in Barnett Newman’s painting. What matters is the idea of the image or sculpture as a container, the literal containment of space.

More recent works investigate the vanishing point. Because the physical experience of a sculpture is so important to Oudshoorn, he seeks ways to give his viewers the feeling that they are included in the totality of the space, in the world that lies behind the visible world. The vanishing point – always at a height of 1.65 metres in Oudshoorn’s case – is identical to the mist that he experienced as a youngster, activating that magical feeling of neverending infinity. In presentations of his work, in his studio or elsewhere, it is clear that Oudshoorn locates vanishing points in many different ways. He always shows works of varying formats, or for example, a sculpture in contact with the floor is alongside a hanging sculpture, as is the case with a recent untitled work from 2007, comprising an iron curve leaning against the wall and painted a dark, steel grey. The changing angle of the curve, which increases proportionately as the wide, spreading ends of the curve come closer to the viewer, are the result of the fact that the sculpture actually has two vanishing points. One pulls the eye downwards, into the depths, and the other disappears on the wall at eye level, above the highest point of the curve.

‘If you stand in front of the sculpture, you know that it all really happens at eye level. You feel just like when you are standing on a beach and as you look into the distance, you can still see the waves moving in the corner of your eye. That gives a sense of disorientation.’ Each sculpture moreover demands movement from the viewer. Viewing the sculptures from the sides not only makes it clear how they are constructed, but it generates a play of lines against volumes and forms.

Reinoud Oudshoorn’s working method is extremely precise. As he sits in his studio, the wall or a sheet of blank paper serves as a starting point. He then makes small sketches, drawings in which he experiments with the basic forms for a sculpture – circles and ellipses. He prefers to draw on pink, squared paper, because in the course of time, the pink fades and changes into beautifully varied tints, so that each drawing takes on colours of its own. When the sketches produce forms to be further developed into a sculpture, Oudshoorn starts on a fullscale drawing in the dimensions of the final sculpture. These are fascinating sheets of white paper on which, along with the sketch for the sculpture, he has written countless, seemingly obsessive series’ of numbers: descriptive geometry with calculations for ellipses.

‘People often ask me if I have a fascination for mathematics, but for me, the math is just a tool, the same way aesthetics is a tool and the same way that striving for technical perfection is a necessary ingredient in my work. But it is not an objective in itself. Craftsmanship does not interest me in that sense. I started writing down those formulas on my drawings because I would forget them if I didn’t. What I most want in a work of art is intensity and integrity. Concentration is not a discipline for me. It grows out of fascination. That way, I know how I relate to the world.’

In ancient Greece, when the preSocratic philosophers began discussing the problem of what the beginning was of all things, according to Umberto Eco in The History of Beauty, it was finding a definition of the world as an ordered whole, following a single law. The Greeks experienced the world as Form, and that Form was equal to Beauty. Pythagoras later made an inextricable link between cosmology, mathematics, natural history and aesthetics. He was the first to say that the beginning of all things was the number. For Oudshoorn, the calculations accompanying his drawings are just a device, yet these ordered series’ evoke the sacred awe the Pythagoreans had for infinity and for the frontiers of what cannot be traced in memory.

‘I have developed an interest in all the problems involving the use of perspective. If you look at the development of perspective, you see that centred perspective is an awkward phenomenon. Just consider being at the beach and the discovery of seeing that horizon was not a straight line. What we learn in order to determine that space is central prospective. I play with that experience, for example, in the floor sculpture with the curve (mentioned above). As you stand at the edge of a large circle, which you cannot completely see because its edges are beyond your vision, you experience a parabola. I have an enormous fascination for those forms. I do not try to make attractive drawings or sculptures. I try to somehow get a grip on something, and in order to do it, I need that precision. Once the form for a sculpture has been determined, the choice of material follows. Each form, like the construction that has to support the form, demands its own material. Iron can refer back to a graphite pencil. Wood is interesting because of the lines of the grain and the warm character of the material, asking to be touched. I take all of these factors into account in the choices I make.’

Given his proclivity for spatiality and transparency – best expressed in his sculptures in glass and iron –Reinoud Oudshoorn continues a long, Dutch tradition of art – primarily painters. Glass is often perceived as a symbol for the metaphysical, the contemplative, on the one hand because of the clarity of glass and on the other because of its mysteriousness, a factor perfectly generated in the spatial quality of Oudshoorn’s sculptures, in which different kinds of matt glass, contained in iron, together form a construction. As Jan Hoet once said, ‘Transparency in relation to glass fits Mondriaan. The white in Mondriaan’s paintings is like glass, almost like water. It has a landscape quality.’ The tradition to which the work of Reinoud Oudshoorn also belongs is the tradition of seeking structural clarity and coherence. The preference for transparency comes from the need to bring depth to perception and also to avoid established boundaries and frameworks.

This much is made clear in one of Oudshoorn’s most recent (untitled) works, from 2008. ‘I was playing with the idea of clouds, the swelling of formations that are constantly changing. I wanted to make glass bubbles, forms that seem to move and themselves contain space, but that also create new space.’ This wall sculpture is reminiscent of an optical instrument, such as an ophthalmologist would use, with complicated lenses and open and closed parts. It is made up of three circles of different formats, captured within a larger circle, and behind it an echo of the same forms, now in a smaller, progressive perspective. The circles are made of iron, with glass soldered into it. The relationship between the different circles is always the same. Oudshoorn wanted movement and multiplicity, which explains the three circles, for three is the lowest number for multiple objects. The circles offer a mist we look through, and the colour and texture of the iron in which the holes for the circles have been cut looks like graphite, giving the sculpture the feel of an endlessly worked drawing. The structure causes the smaller forms to float in just the right way, behind the other surfaces, partly reinforced by shadows. The thickness of the outside line of the three circles is chosen insuch a way that the material feel of the iron is retained, without it becoming a flat surface, but rather a contour that accentuates the transparency. This too is a sculpture that plays with illusion and threedimensionality. ‘I became a sculptor,’ muses Reinoud Oudshoorn, ‘but maybe I am still that painter in search of magic.’