Tuesday, June 26, 2007

RONALD DE BLOEME - Männerparadies













After numerous group exhibitions in Berlin this is de Bloeme’s first solo show in Germany.



New large format enemal on canvas works form the core of the exhibition. De Bloeme´s colour-intensive usually austere compositions reflect and reduce the constant presence of advertising, packaging, national symbols and pictograms of everyday life. These smooth, perfectly composed paintings seem like the memory of a walk through the city, cut into large, coloured segments.



Composition is the will to communicate - so could one also summarize the work of the young Berlin-based Netherlands painter. Precisely this will is central to his reflections and investigations about the nature of visual communication systems. The desire to reach others expresses itself with different intensity - aggressively, tenderly, quietly, loud, self-interested, unselfishly. Communication is the highest capitalistic virtue.



Signs are demanding. They want to be considered. Ronald de Bloeme observes them. He does not go simply past the awnings, the postal sacks, the diagrams, the patterns, the guides to paper planes models. He sees the effort, the work, the will for communication.



By quoting visual messages of a non-art-related system of symbols, the artist refers to processes of the creation of meaning itself. At the same time these patterns, found in products, on building walls or brochures are repeatedly transformed by the artist.



Ronald de Bloeme responds through the intensity of painting to the plea that is transmitted by these symbols and places the constructed codes at that point, where the fight for the principals of images and the suitability of picture languages are traditional fought: in the rectangular frame of the traditional painting. He releases the conventional pictorial composition from its traditional set of rules, by exposing it to the aggressive stylistic idiom of the visual culture of goods and leaves the effect of the pictures to the scrutiny of the viewer.



Work by Ronald de Bloeme also features in a show entitled ‛Ons feestje is niet leuk’, an exhibition he curated for Galerie Nouvelles Images.

Exhibition Dates: 16th June -15th August, 2007. www.nouvellesimages.nl




Hamish Morrison Georg Spielhaus