Recent works by José Heerkens.

The art of José Heerkens is all about her fascination for space. Her constantly acute mind investigates and probes the subtle qualities that determine our human experience of space; not only its logical and geometrical aspects are her subject of painting, but also our perception and experience of space.

Heerkens' paintings are abstract, although from the beginning they have been and still are inspired by the observation and experience of actual spaces and landscapes. To know about these is not in the least important. It can be a vision of Australian landscapes while travelling there, or the nuances of light and colour in the space of her own studio.

 Her work is constructivist in character, the paintings refer to themselves; they are autonomous and do not represent reality in a symbolic way.

 Yet there is not only logic and construction, but intuition and memory are important too in the execution of her works. Intuition guides her approach to colour: she states that in her work she is not only hunting for the space but also for the light, and this underlines the inventive, classic painter that is still there. But how to construct light in paint?

 In his 1930 austere manifest Concrete Art, Theo van Doesburg explains that colour is one of the subject matters of painting, on a level with geometrical forms like squares, triangles, planes, lines. That same year, but in a more exalted voice, he writes his text elementarism:

 what is the highest the painter can achieve?

feeling that he is colour, being colour. without that the work is colourless, even when it is colourful. to be colour, to be white, red, yellow, blue, black, that is being a painter. it is not sufficient for the painter of today and tomorrow to think colour, but to be colour and to eat colour and to transform himself into a painting...

 Why is it that Van Doesburg so strongly stresses the element of colour? Because colour in itself is a more lyrical element, more resistant to a painterly concept that only allows for concrete elements? A little further he states:

 i have no objection against the use of ochres, on condition that these really are understood as material.

 And yet - the red, the blue, in fact any colour is never ever 'defined' as the square is. All artists of De Stijl had to decide which red or which yellow was their elemental red or yellow. Green? No green! Van Doesburg seems to stress just a little too much that colour should be treated as material, non-sentimental, non-symbolical, "in opposition to your temperament". Colour as a plastic and elementary given. But yet; which colour?

 Between 1949 and his death in 1976 Joseph Albers painted his Homage to the Square hundreds of times; in a dialogue of systematic and intuitive considerations, he applied colours both as materials and as space defining forces. He answered the question about colour in one inventive way: by painting the visual dialogue between specific colours.

 In José Heerkens' work we encounter the inner dialogue between systematic principles and a more empirical search for the interaction of colour, light and space. Yet, as in the case of Albers, her 'eating colour' definitely is a concrete quality of her paintings; their use is not symbolic, but experiential and their system allows for invention in the execution of the painting.

 In a conversation I remember José saying: I love horizontal space. Surely the horizontal line is dominant in her recent works. Like the use of visual elements plane, contour, rhythm and grids, she handles the line in constructive and intuitive ways simultaneously. Through constructions and transformations, the words and grammar of visual elementarism strive to perform a composition that elicits transparency and complexity, clarity and density, logic and atmosphere.

 Painting 2010-8 is dominated by horizontal movements; the lines carry the colours across the canvas, as Heerkens states. Titles like Passing Colours and Written Colours indicate how important the aspects of spatial activity and spatial movement are for the artist.

 Even where vertical lines, for example of the underlying grid, remain visible, these aren't assigned the same importance as their horizontal counterparts when it comes to their colour, volume or movement. In Painting 2010-9 and Painting 2010-10 we encounter a fascinating dialogue between rudimentary vertical lines and substantial horizontal movements with nuanced colours of black, dark green and dark blue. These dark masses, these concatenations of shadows have the special beauty of the subdued dimensions of city streets and building blocks in deep night.

Cees de Boer