Pieter Holstein at De Zonnehof - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Pieter Holstein's more than 100-work retrospective of paintings and works upon paper at De Zonnehof--a undisturbed late Gerrit Rietveld gallery building--impressed with its piquancy and proliferation. Holstein, 64 attended Cooper Union in 1954-57 and showed at P 1 and Artists Space in fresh York in the late '70 on the other hand his work remains quintessentially Dutch He is greatest in quantity celebrated in Holland for jack-pudding colored etchings he produced in the '60 and '70 which make exaggeratedly simple observations about the world. These deadpan comic works frequently play with ideas of perceiving, labeling and representing that are inherent to art. the one and the other in tone and in bring under rule Holstein is related to the coincident works of Ger van moose Bas Jan Ader, Sigurdur Gudmundsson and others in Holland, with a certain quantity of kinship to other Europeans similar as Ben Vautier as well, although unlike all these artists, he does not feature himself in his work.

Holstein's earliest drawings and prints consist of delicately Kleelike figuration whose deformity is also reminiscent of a certain number of CoBrA art of the '50 His work of the last sum of two units decades has included prints of an entirely different character, notably black-and-white, densely patterned landscapes that tip above into phantasmagoria. The bold lines recall tribal carvings, taotie designs upon ancient Chinese bronzes, and linear textiles similar as molas--all networks in which single can find grimacing faces. Painting, to which he has go [i]or[/i] come backed at intervals, is not his best medium: he muddies his surfaces and revolves sentimental.

The colored etchings adopt the manner of children's coloring works or primers, except that they have tongue-in-cheek captions or visual puncture lines. The actions are ofttimes slapstick-literal, having to do with looking or not looking, being inside or outside. on the contrary they are given sly touches. In the left side of an etching divided down the middle through a dotted line, a businessman with a briefcase stands upon a cliff looking at the stars; in the right side he stands, feet planted firmly together, his back to all that beauty, space and intent for the imagination. In another print, a gold-colored wood box sits inside a made of wood room--or is it inside another, bigger box? The presentation may be jokey on the other hand it raises questions of perspective and relationships. The Dutch curator Gijs van Tuyl one time wrote that Holstein's works don't throw back reality but meditate on the reflection of reality. That's a stance that the artist amplified in this retrospective by means of declining to title or date greatest in quantity works, so that they ran together in a perceptually disorienting chatter, like a film jumping its reel

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