REVIEW

“The attraction to Reinoud Oudshoorn’s sculptures was immediate. Minimal in their language, they venture into a realm outside the object character of classical sculpture while using traditional craftsmanship. Driven by a desire for harmony and applying classic rules of perspective in every work, Oudshoorn’s sculptures go far beyond the space they inhabit.
As works they take some of the long-standing themes of art into the 21 st century. From Greek temples and the great frescoes of the Renaissance to Op Art and interactive performance, one subject has always been around: the fascination with the illusion of perception.
Another subject is the transformation of an art work through the shifting of light and shade according to varying times and conditions. Yet another is the alteration of an art work’s composition and impact through spatial movement and change of perspective.
Oudshoorn unites all aspects in his works and infuses them with an almost metaphysical quality.

A painter in his early career, Oudshoorn got discontent with the two-dimensional limitations of the canvas. He began to apply the illusionary language of painting to sculpture forming a bridge between the spatial illusion of a flat surface and the concrete reality of a physical object.
Oudshoorn achieves this fusion partly through the materials and compositions he chooses. However, the most idiosyncratic ingredient is that Oudshoorn systematically applies the same vanishing point of 1,65 meters to all of his sculptures. Historically, the vanishing point alludes to the invisible world that lies behind the point where all lines converge. In Oudshoorn’s sculptures it suggests an endlessness in the space that surrounds us, an infinity of mind and sphere.
Oudshoorn’s inspirations originate from impressions of the world the artist experiences. This can be imagery of organic textures or formations drawn from nature as well as architectural forms or details. An important phenomenon is the mist and its muffled views and sounds characteristic of his homeland. Abstracted into surfaces and structures, they are transformed into objects that reveal contemplative and even mystical qualities.

The link between nature and infinity refers to familiar artistic movements such as the reduced, metaphysically charged compositions of the De Stijl or to the atmospheric light of 17 th century Dutch landscape painting. The engagement with perception and dissolution of form relates Oudshoorn’s ideas to more contemporary artistic experiments like the condensation cubes of Hans Haacke from the early 60s or Anthony Gormley’s interactive chamber ‘Blind Light’.
Oudshoorn’s sculptures take shape by staring at a white surface, a piece of paper, an empty wall or into dense fog. From a cross fertilization of the white emptiness and the artists’ imagination and experience, shapes of potential sculptures emerge, such as clouds, arches, windows or water surfaces, which find their first concrete form in preliminary sketches. Oudshoorn then further develops the sculptures through precise technical drawings that include all calculations of the desired vanishing point for that particular object.

Welded steel, frosted glass combined with steel or layered wood are the tangible materials in Reinoud Oudshoorn’s sculptures, which he designs and manufactures entirely himself. Besides the wall-based objects consisting of rectangles, circles, rhombus and sheet metal, Oudshoorn also experiments with larger installations and wooden objects. The steel and glass sculptures give the impression of minute, wall mounted stages and rarely go beyond a manageable, even portable size.
The wood sculptures are made from layered sheets and are typically finished with a curved, lavishly smooth surface that renders them tactile and sensual. The larger sculptures are usually made from steel only, are floor based and communicate in particular with the architectural features that surround them.
All materials interact with the space they occupy. Despite being solid, sometimes even heavy, the sculptures often seem rather fragile and almost floating.

Issues of space and spatial illusion is what defines Oudshoorn’s sculptures at the core. Space that becomes the concrete reality of a three-dimensional object, but also spaces that lie in between the shapes and materials visible; areas that cannot be captured and confined or which remain hidden or obscured. Once the spectator begins to assess the works from different angles they open up to endless spatial perspectives.
Many times have I seen visitors bend below one of Oudshoorn’s sculptures, the cheek against the wall, to try and figure out the structure behind, which is often surprisingly simple. Usually visitors then start to move around and inspect the sculpture from all kinds of view- points. This is when the fascination merges with a kind of disbelief.
Oudshoorn’s sculptures, assembled in one exhibition, transform the space into a plurality of perspectives and a spectacular landscape of illusionary spaces.

Another source of inspiration are the ‘spiritual’ works of abstract expressionism from artists like Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly. Oudshoorn is equally trying to create a level of perception that resembles a state of consciousness, where the immaterial transcends to the physical.
Oudshoorn seeks ways to give viewers the physical experience of the totality of a space through a relatively small object. “A work must produce more space than it consumes” as the artist explains himself.

When Oudshoorn’s works leave the studio and are installed in a space they have only partly fulfilled their purpose. What makes the sculptures so unique is that they only unfold their true qualities once they explore and stimulate another space that goes far beyond the room they inhabit: our imagination.”

Patrick Heide