Huben - Construction Paintings
Huben (Huub van Leuven, Haarlem, 1964)
Builds his paintings. Literally. He calls them Construction Paintings. As both an artist and a builder, his work grows from a deeply rooted physical relationship with material and space. For Huben, building is not a technique, but a way of seeing.
It is as if he sees with his hands, and the eye follows later.
That language runs as a constant throughout his work. What changes is how it manifests itself. At times exuberant, raw and almost chaotic. At others clear and still, reduced to planes, lines and colours.
The search remains; the form changes.
In his recent work, Huben is leaving more and more out. Not as a break with what came before, but as a continuing process of concentration.
What disappears makes space for what remains.
Plane. Line. Depth. Material. Colour.
The planes seek their own relationship with one another. One comes forward, another recedes. Sometimes in balance, sometimes with a subtle tension.
Colours strengthen one another and, at times, they clash. It is precisely where harmony is slightly disturbed that tension arises and with it, emotion. Colour becomes space. Space becomes emotion.
Construction Paintings for outdoors.
The work now also crosses the boundary between inside and outside. Huben builds paintings that can live permanently outdoors, made with materials that withstand the elements.
There, the surroundings become part of the work. Light moves across the surface. Shadow deepens the relief. Rain, sun and the seasons change the way we see it.
The painting lives with the place it inhabits.
Perhaps it is there that Huben’s worlds come closest together: the artist and the builder, painting and architecture, material and emotion.