Bob Eikelboom

It’s not the brushwork. It’s not the texture of the paint that immediately strikes you, it’s the magnetic cut-outs stuck on the metal background. In Beyond Freedom Bob Eikelboom (b. 1991) will show a selection of new and older magnet paintings in which he experiments with composition, colour, form and the relationship between artwork and viewer.

Bob Eikelboom approaches his work as a true painter. His use of colour and his compositions betray his painter’s eye. Drawing on the rich history of art, his work is well-considered. “Paintings are like collages of paint”, he says. “The process of painting consists of adding, taking away, and adding again. There’s a long history of experimenting with composition in painting. Piet Mondrian used coloured paper and tape to perfect his compositions, as you can still see in Victory Boogie Woogie. Henri Matisse had his Cut-Outs carefully pinned up before they were glued onto the canvas. And I do the same thing in my way.”

Bob Eikelboom grew up in the Netherlands and America, and this is reflected in his work, which uses humour to question the role of painting. It combines the irony of European art with the audacity and grand gestures typical of American art, including the focus on the banal, which has occasionally resurfaced in contemporary art ever since the days of pop art.