File Note 55: René Daniëls

One painting by René Daniëls that has always stayed in my mind is called A Fountain in Africa. It shows a vaguely exotic-looking landscape, constructed symmetrically around a central perspective: the sides of the canvas are filled with loosely painted trees and foliage, with palm leaves jutting into the middle on both sides, leaving the central vista open for a clearing. Right in the centre, just below the horizon line, three small figures each raise an arm, pointing upwards to where a single giraffe floats in the sky. In contrast to the loosely painted landscape, the giraffe is depicted as a simple line drawing. It seems to be hovering, occupying its own space, disconnected from the rest of the painting but depending on it at the same time. A Fountain in Africa was first exhibited in New York in 1984 and photographs from the time show René Daniëls adding the giraffe to the painting during the installation of the exhibition in the gallery. I have always wondered if Daniëls had planned to put it there all along, or if he acted spontaneously. His gesture turns the landscape painting into a backdrop, and it becomes the scenery for the giraffe. The symmetrical, almost circular composition adds to this shift – the foliage now reads like side panels of a theatre set with the empty central axis becoming the stage. Daniëls’ ability to add a crucial element at the last moment underlines the temporary quality that a lot of his paintings seem to have: the sense that their current state represents only one possible scenario that could be reconfigured at any moment, like a test arrangement reflecting on its own conditions.

The exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, Painting on Unknown Languages, refers to two paintings of the same title made in 1985. One shows a large group of mostly white and grey ‘rooms’ emerging from a green background. The background appears filled in but patchy, first with a light green and then gradually over painted with darker shades. Each of the rooms are similar in size, evenly distributed across the surface of the painting, their walls coated in a semi-transparent layer of white paint, rendering the blank rectangles invisible. They appear as individual shapes floating on the green ground, as if waiting to be assigned to one of the empty walls or as if they had just escaped from one. The constellation in the second painting is different. Here the white rectangles are emerging from a dark blue brushed-out background. The walls they usually appear on have been painted over, leaving only a small corner visible through a gap in the blue. Despite their graphic simplicity, it is difficult to describe Daniëls’ paintings. They are concerned with concealing and revealing their principles of organisation; they share formal concerns but find different solutions. The fact that both paintings have the same title (Painting on Unknown Languages) emphasises Daniëls’ desire to depict temporality: like two states or perspectives, each painting is complete in itself whilst anticipating different formal arrangements. The title translates this ambiguous state of expectation into language, adding yet another layer of meaning without offering an explanation.

The music of Punk and post-Punk produced in the 70s and 80s influences Daniëls’ work throughout (he even documented many concerts on film); its immediacy, formal rigor and self-reflexivity is reflected in Daniëls attitude to painting. His ambivalent and matter-of-fact approach doesn’t seem cynical or strategic but invested in the possibilities of the medium. He constructs a conceptual framework and searches within it for intuitive solutions. The programmatic decision for one motif allows him to freely experiment with colour, composition, gesture and material, to approach each painting on its own terms and let the process determine the decision. Working with an absolute economy of means, Daniëls doesn’t seem to be seduced by the materiality itself or the gesture of the painted mark. It is exactly this ambivalence that leads him to the intelligent (and often funny) experiments that make their argument as paintings. Each one is articulated clearly with a distinct style but feels like a proposition up for discussion and not a final statement.