Den Houter showed his ice paintings for the first time in series in his solo AND WHAT NOW in Frank Taal gallery (November 2018). An ode to the moment and the experience, as he often does in his oeuvre. At the same time, he also shows a photo print of one of his favorite ice paintings, thereby denying the concept and principle of the ice paintings.
With this work he consciously opens himself up, vulnerable to criticism and doubt.
Writer, poet and art critic Mischa Andriessen about his ice paintings:
[... Thus undermining ice paintings that, as befits ice, melt at some point and then cease to exist, the prevailing notion that a painting is a timeless fixation of an image and / or an idea. From the freezing of the paint to the display and thus the defrosting, these ice paintings do not have a lasting shape for a moment, are they then paintings if they keep changing until nothing is left of them? And if so, when are they? Or does such an ice painting actually comprise a lot of different paintings in succession?
It is telling that Den Houter dares to do such an experiment in which he sets the physical and chemical processes in motion, but then has little or no control over them. In passing, he provides comments on the art market, because how do you get something traded that is constantly different and finally gone forever? ...]