In the work of Catharina Dhaen and Piet Dieleman, rhythm operates as an underlying structure unfolding through layering, repetition, and color. Both artists approach the painting as a field of relations in which each gesture produces a new visual response.
Catharina Dhaen’s practice is marked by a layered pictorial construction in which earlier layers function as a structural support for the final image. Traces of previous decisions remain visible: overpainted passages, shifting contours, and color planes partially obscuring one another. Her paintings evolve through a process of action and reaction, gradually condensing into an image shaped by both intuition and formal consideration. Painting itself—its materiality, tempo, and internal logic—remains the central subject.
Piet Dieleman, by contrast, operates within a strict, almost dogmatic color scheme through which he investigates how colors interact and respond to one another. By placing colors adjacent to and on top of each other, a dynamic tension emerges in which hues intensify, cancel, or destabilize one another.
For Art Rotterdam, a selection of works has been chosen in which rhythm becomes a key element: a dispersed field of dots distributed seemingly at random across the surface. This dotted pattern introduces a visual pulse that structures the painting, activating the planes and guiding the viewer’s gaze across the composition.