On EVENT HORIZON
Roy Green October 2004

Jeroen Witvliet’s multi-panel pieces are comprised of poured and pooled, scraped, brushed and manipulated layers of silver and black metallic industrial marine enamel paint.

The artist was initially inspired by the Nordic Niflheim creation myth’s eleven frozen rivers flowing and manifesting life on earth. The icy metallic rivulets in Witvliets paintings echo this ancient legend. These self-referential painterly events overflow with subversive beauty and optical resonance. The shiny skin of their large surfaces are repellant yet seductive. These works of considerable size and texture could be seen as a re-invention of “Action Painting”, without the ejaculatory metaphysics of historical abstract expressionism. Due to the unique viscosity and properties of these industrial materials, the painting must be done spontaneously, producing these enigmatic relics of private studio “ performance “.

Witvliet’s work’s both reject and expand the traditional horizontally orientated landscape field, although traces of the painting’s previous incarnation as well as grids and other forms slip in and out of our vision.

These murky yet luminous paintings remind me of similarily scaled works by Ross Bleckner and Anselm Kiefer yet maintain a more cool and cryptic demeanour.

Perhaps less overtly political than some of Witvliet’s other series, these paintings unravel like a slow and meditative coagulations of reference and meaning, chance operations a la Brian Eno or John Cage, blown up to mural painting scale.