Robert Zandvliet

With his compelling painterly language, Robert Zandvliet (1970) moves within the field of tension between figuration and abstraction. Zandvliet made his debut in the late 1990s with a series of monumental paintings of everyday objects: a rear-view mirror, a cinema screen, a hairpin. The clean lines of these objects evolve into road networks or landscapes. This year, the work of Robert Zandvliet will be presented in two major international exhibitions, and the substantial monograph Monolith will be presented.

The Fries Museum began collecting his work early on and now sees an opportunity to shed renewed light on Zandvliet’s oeuvre in a retrospective. The exhibition Robert Zandvliet – On the Shores of Time traces his development over the past 30 years. The exhibition opens with The Hairpin from the collection of the Fries Museum and concludes with Arundo, one of his most recent paintings of reed pollen reflected in the water.

Cover image: Robert Zandvliet, Without Title, 2007 | Loan from AkzoNobel Art Foundation, photo: Henk Geraedts