Luk Lambrecht

Blue, blue, nothing but blue


Art gallery S65 in Aalst has become the place to be for art-lovers that want 
to discover how modern painters have added a touch of genius to monochrome 
painting. At present gallery-owner August Hoviele exhibits a series of 
canvasses of Rudolf de Crignis, an artist who lives both in Zürich and New 
York. His paintings are all identical deep-blue works of art to which the 
visitors’ eyes are drawn until, after a short while, the monochrome blue 
colour turns into sheer depth, dazzling square paintings, at first sight 
somewhat in line with the Frenchman Yves Klein or with the art movement 
called as form the mid-eighties radical painting.  This school, lead by the 
American Joseph Marioni and the German Günther Umberg, pursued a visually 
stimulating art of painting which would make the visitor aware of the 
historical continuity in the monochrome, non-narrative art of painting.
Rudolf de Crignis rejects in his work the slightest hint of metaphysical 
associations. Painting is for him purely manual labor creating depth from the 
colour itself. And it should be said: with his paper-thin layers of oil paint 
on a chalk bed, de Crignis succeeds wonderfully well in doing so. Alternating 
with the occasional black layer, he creates an almost luminous and 
transparent canvas. That is beautiful and, for those who keep on looking, 
even staggering. In the snow-white rooms of gallery S65 these blue squares 
show up razor sharp against the neutral architecture. Rudolf de Crignis will 
soon be the darling pet of monochrome painting.

De Morgen, Bruxelles, November 8. 1996