Until 8 January 2020, Slewe Gallery in Amsterdam has programmed an exhibition with work by Steven Aalders. The solo runs parallel to an Aalders exhibition in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, which will be on display until 23 June 2022.
Aalders’ work is inspired by art history, but not always in the most obvious ways. In terms of style, the abstract artist works in the tradition of Piet Mondrian's modernism and American minimal art. But for the colour combinations he chooses, he often goes much further back in time. In 2020, for example, he showed a work in the Van Gogh Museum that was breathtaking in its simplicity. For the blue-yellow work, which was presented against a deep red wall, Aalders was inspired by a letter from Van Gogh. This historic artist is known for his fondness of working en plein air: in the midst of the nature he loved to capture. In a letter to his brother, Van Gogh describes how he brought the work “The Harvest” back to his studio before laying the work flat on the floor. His studio floor was a deep red and thus functioned as an important colour test: for Van Gogh, it was the best way to see whether the colours would appear flat or pale, compared to the bright brick red. If that wasn’t the case, the painting was considered a success. As a tribute to the artist, Aalder reduced “The Harvest” to its colour essence, against the same red floor, or in this case: the wall. Aalders' work was surrounded by the timeless classics of Van Gogh and his contemporaries — who welcome about 2 million visitors in a regular year — but it was precisely this work by Aalders that made a deep impression.
For many of his works, Aalders is inspired by (centuries) old paintings and specifically by the ideas about colour that, explicitly or implicitly, underlie them. Van Gogh read a lot about colour theories and liked to experiment with them, in order to arrive at powerful colour combinations. For the 'Seasons' exhibition in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Aalders made a personal interpretation of the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the famous painter from the 16th century. In a series of six abstract paintings, Aalders depicts the rhythm of the seasons. These works all consist of three vertical colour bands ,that refer to Bruegel's use of colour. Bruegel was known for adapting his palette to the weather. In the exhibition in Slewe Gallery, Aalders mainly shows square paintings that are subdivided into two perfectly balanced areas of colour.
Aalders' work is also indebted to Goethe's colour theory — the famous German scientist, author and playwright (known for 'Faust'), philosopher, poet, naturalist and statesman. He devoted much of his working life to the scientific study of colours. In 'Zur Farbenlehre' ('On the theory of colours') from 1810, Goethe elaborates on the ways in which we experience colours and the emotional experiences that we have with them. In this line of thinking, yellow and blue are considered basic colours. Goethe would ask artists about their relationship and (psychological) experience with colour. Goethe also studied the interaction between light and dark. He didn’t consider darkness and shadows as an absence of light, but rather a visible, polar counterpart of light. Colours, according to Goethe, consist of contrasts, created by a mixture of light and dark — and cannot be reduced to cold, rational laws. Goethe deeply disliked his contemporary Newton, who also studied light and showed that a prism refracted white light into all the colours of the rainbow. Goethe reproduced that experiment on a foggy day and "concluded" that it was nonsense. The way in which Goethe approached colour is more in line with the ways in which artists experience colour, and less with the contemporary empirical scientific approach, that was started by scientists such as Newton. But Goethe's work was an important source of inspiration for artists like William Turner — as well as Aalders.
Steven Aalders tries to capture a certain essence in his abstract oil paintings, by creating light, tension and space using paint. His paintings are the result of a careful process in which colour is gradually built up, layer by layer. He strives for a universal and harmonious beauty from which all noise has been filtered. He opts for complex colour combinations in his work. For Aalders, the clear, simple harmony that emerges from his abstract compositions is an alternative to the violence and ugliness in our society. He also writes about art, and his practice and imagery are inspired by his own extensive image research and art historical and philosophical concepts like time and place. In the summer of 2017, he had the opportunity to work and conduct research at the Van Doesburghuis (from the founder of De Stijl) in Meudon, near Paris.
Aalders studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Croydon College of Art in London and the Ateliers in (then) Haarlem. You can find Aalders' work in various collections, including the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, the Kröller-Müller Museum, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Museum Voorlinden, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation and the ABNAMRO Art Collection.
The exhibition 'Shadow' will be on show in Slewe Gallery in Amsterdam until 23 January 2022.