New Zero
Exhibition View
Piero Manzoni / John Nixon
Henk Peeters
Jean Tinguely
Jesus Rafael Soto
Martial Rayisse
Jef Verheyen
Jef Verheyen
Espace (green), 1963
Oil on canvas
45 x 45 cm
One key feature of J. Verheyens's work is the interest in colour progression - after his achromatic earlywork. Colour progression stands for a continuous flow and change of colour. The progression of colour is by its nature amorphous and cannot be fixed at any concrete point. It is a condition without fixed points, whose key quality - appropriately to the nature of colour - is that its spreads without limit in all directions. At the same time this movement gives birth to an illusionism that is in fact halted by the square shape of the canvas - a reminder of Malevich's black square - but it cannot stop it developing out into the room.
Verheyen's paintings develop an inner dynamic from which the viewer can withdraw only with difficulty. He wanted to show that the canvas only appears to be two-dimensional, but is in fact a flat body.
Thus the artist's aim was to lay this flatness open to experience with his painting by energizing the colour with the aid of its light value. (Gottfried Boehm, 1992) Jef Verheyen's painting is intended to make clear that the most intensive form of visual experience can be achieved only when the eye is not trained on details, but on the whole in which no more meaning is conveyed.