At Cross Art Projects there’s a show on called Double Dutch until October 2 that features four painters who are either from the Netherlands or have Dutch parentage. When we first heard about the show we had our reservations. We knew some Dutch kids when were growing up –brother and sister twins named Dik and Marijan – and they used to sit by themselves in the playground and eat unsavory cakes. Marijan was a big kid and didn’t like being teased about her blonde pigtails and she had the strongest Chinese burn you’ve ever seen – our arms would be bright red for days. Later on we became friends with Dik, but he was odd and when we were out one day he came around in sat in a tree in our backyard for four hours. The neighbours told our parents about it and after that we were banned from being friends with the Dutch kid. So you can imagine four painters from Holland… Our arms were tingling.
Juan Den Pourg has been living in Australia since the early 1980s and has shown at Mori, Rex Irwin and Union Street Gallery in the 1980s. He says he’s a ‘staunch romantic painter’ which translates into small oil on board paintings of what look like tops or old style fishing lures on parade. His paintings are very creamy, gauzy things that make your eyes water. So too Jelle Van Den Berg’s paintings, another ex-Union Street guy who has a mixture of styles. On the one hand there are paintings such as Studio Double Dutch and Bottles which are very traditional looking still lives and views of his studio, while on the other hand Coledale Pool and Make Goat’s Cheese are impasto rich concoctions groaning under the weight of layers of paint even though they’re tiny 30 x 30cm boards. Goat’s Cheese in fact looks as though it was really made from cheese and Coledale Pool has a big egg yellow spot that one should approach with the same caution as you would the red spot on Jupiter.
Rudi Vos, living in Sydney since 1972, says that his work is about representing the effects of sunlight on irregular surfaces. Those surfaces are guitars, which may be irregular, but they are also very smooth, but with a festive use of oils and extra whipped surfaces, they just sort of poke out of the paint. Our favourite pictures in the show were by Joop Buis, who we’re not sure if he lives here or what, but it was the frog monster on the invitation that took our fancy. Called Impresario, the picture is of a smiling hippopotamus type creature – or maybe a toad – ambling down the street in a suit and a fob watch. Sound like anyone we know? Buis is also quite handy with Neo Rauch style landscape, only a lot flatter and with some slight gestural thing going on too. A trio of works called Dance, Statue and Life and Death look like flattened frogs on the road. We think this is a good thing.
