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Rolf Den Dunnen remains fascinated by typewriters. To him, typewriters are not only beautiful objects in their own right, but also carry with them the legendary associations of decades past. This work is inspired by the ZERO movement of the early 1960s.
There is a hidden beauty in Den Dunnen’s repetition of typed letters, words and symbols. Within repetition lies a sense of grandeur, of something monumental. Yet repetition also creates a sense of alienation. Through the repetition of identical elements, the sequential arrangement and partial overlapping of typed numbers, letters, words and symbols, a coded and mysterious image emerges. This imagined mystification sometimes reveals something genuinely “great”, while simultaneously evoking something strange and enigmatic.
The sense of alienation in this work is sometimes interpreted as religious or transcendent, though not in a metaphysical sense. Rather, the work seems to search for a living form of transcendence: a sense of wonder at, and celebration of, our own mortality.
The new works, created on handmade paper, canvas and linen, are rolled through Den Dunnen’s Olympia typewriters as if subjected to a rack, where every secret is extracted in glorious black, vivid red and navy blue.
Den Dunnen’s most recent work has become more conceptual and, at times, three-dimensional. The hidden beauty of repetition remains its point of departure. Fortunately, however, the message never takes precedence over the form of expression.
There is a hidden beauty in Den Dunnen’s repetition of typed letters, words and symbols. Within repetition lies a sense of grandeur, of something monumental. Yet repetition also creates a sense of alienation. Through the repetition of identical elements, the sequential arrangement and partial overlapping of typed numbers, letters, words and symbols, a coded and mysterious image emerges. This imagined mystification sometimes reveals something genuinely “great”, while simultaneously evoking something strange and enigmatic.
The sense of alienation in this work is sometimes interpreted as religious or transcendent, though not in a metaphysical sense. Rather, the work seems to search for a living form of transcendence: a sense of wonder at, and celebration of, our own mortality.
The new works, created on handmade paper, canvas and linen, are rolled through Den Dunnen’s Olympia typewriters as if subjected to a rack, where every secret is extracted in glorious black, vivid red and navy blue.
Den Dunnen’s most recent work has become more conceptual and, at times, three-dimensional. The hidden beauty of repetition remains its point of departure. Fortunately, however, the message never takes precedence over the form of expression.
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Artworks by Rolf Den Dunnen
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