Context « WimZorn

Context

Heeding intuition

A fascination with architecture and an affinity with the intellectual legacy of the Bauhaus (specifically, Jean Gorin and Theo van Doesburg) become emphatic presences in the work of Wim Zorn. The need to ‘plan and furnish’ paintings is heightened by an encounter with Sergio Umberto Barbieri. This Italian architect and lecturer at the universities of Milan, Venice and Delft, helps shift Zorn’s work into the context of interior architecture. Painting, for Zorn, is a matter of careful balance, composition, construction, deletion and simplification. He emphasizes the power of reduction, much like representatives of Minimal Art and Post-Painterly Abstraction of the 1960s and related fundamental painters of the 1970s. But Zorn takes things a step further. His paintings are partially concrete and formalistic, but they also manifest a lyrical component in their surfaces and paint application, by which he distances himself from analytical investigations into the fundamentals of art. To avoid entrapment in ultimate simplification, he seeks a subtle balance between spontaneity and reflection. In his vision, each painting requires a measure of layering. In addition to his attention to the specific roles of format, surface, form, line, color, paint handling, texture and structure, his focus on the intuitive process is of vital importance. Zorn claims all the freedom that an artist needs, but he is also convinced that the road to a complete painting requires artistic choices. He heeds his intuition without loosing sight of sound constructions and compositions.

The studio as delivery room

Initially Wim Zorn paints figuratively, to see if he still has the touch. Soon a need to simplify forms arises. In 2002 Hans Paalman (former director of the Schiedam Municipal Museum) starts him off on another track. The painter relinquishes his reliance on reality and learns to trust his intuition and feelings. His studio becomes at once a delivery room and a laboratory. In this work place he creates an autonomous world of materials, form and color, in which spatial experiences are combined with physical presence. The paintings manifest themselves as bodies of paint which stimulate the sense of touch. Subcutaneously, an element of delicacy always prevails. Irregularities, rough surfaces and ragged edges alleviate the severity of the formal language. A dialogue with physicality may be sensed in every fibre. Bamboo as well as textiles and fibreglass are incorporated into his matter paintings. The overpainted materials guarantee a weathered skin. They enliven the picture and suggest organic processes. Everything hinges on an ultimate combination of simplicity, balance, visual tension, and the creation of space and quiet. To reach that artistic goal, powers of concentration, decisiveness and independence are essential elements.