Juxtaposed:

Aaron van Erp/Steven Aalders

March 26th - June 4th, 2023

On The Inside is proud to present Juxtaposed, a duo exhibition that features an extensive selection of both Aaron van Erp’s macabre universe and Steven Aalders’ monumental minimalism. A juxtaposition that testifies to the two poles that continue to attract human kind: that of darkness and of light.

The works

Aaron van Erp’s paintings and drawings can be recognized by his gruesome figures, which are inflicting violence onto each other. While the paintings unfold on substantial canvases, his characters appear as small, elusive, shadows from a dark subconscious fever dream.

Contrasted by consumer products such as cola bottles, meatballs, shopping carts and party hats, a light hearted colour palette, and a handful of humorous titles, van Erp invites the spectator to be amused by his fictional scenes. The contradiction between the dark imagery and the playful elements, underlines the absurdity of the violence we consume on a daily basis through mainstream media. Further, it contributes to a blurring of the lines between contradicting concepts such as reality and fiction, victims and perpetrators, and good and evil.

Steven Aalders is known for his geometric abstract oil paintings, which are reminiscent of modernism of Mondrian and American Minimal Art. These are simple in form, but complex in colour scheme, upon which Aalders attempts to create space and light through paint.

Aalders’ own research into art history has resulted in a well-considered visual language that tackles the boundaries that have been found and broken by great modernists before him. Further, Aalders uses such modernist principles in a personal way by relating them to tangible concepts such as time and space, and combining them with various colour concepts from early art history. This clear, simple harmony that emerges from his abstract compositions is for Aalders an alternative to violence and ugliness in our society.

Aaron van Erp’s cultivation of darkness, and Steven Aalders’ search for light and warmth, are opposed in this juxtaposition. While van Erp aims at capturing human darkness and violence as a whole, Aalders looks for ways of translating this darkness into a clear and simple language. Aaron van Erp rarely makes preliminary studies for his work, and his paintings are often based on vague ideas, which only take shape on the canvas. Everything is driven by an intuitive response to what emerges from his subconscious. This bizarre universe, which unfolds on the canvas, absorbs the spectator into van Erp´s fictional scenery and the spectator becomes a part of van Erp’s own subconscious space.

Steven Aalders’ minimal approach does, however, necessitate a rather thorough examination, where he searches and orients himself in a chaotic time that calls for order. Aalders’ beautiful and structured compositions capture the light of the space through colour, and the works becomes a part of the space in which the spectator is situated. In such a way van Erp is welcoming the viewer into his own isolated darkness, while Aalders is enabling a collective light.

Juxtaposed invites the spectator to reflect upon the essence of painting: figurative painting and abstraction, darkness and light, colour scheme, and the use of space.

About the participating artists

Aaron van Erp (b.1978, Netherlands) graduated from the Academy of Art and Design in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in 2001. He won the Buning Brongers Prize in 2002 and was nominated for the Wim Izaks Prize (2004). In 2007, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag presented the first major retrospective of the artist, who was only 29 years old at the time. Aaron van Erp is also widely recognized internationally, and one of his early solo exhibitions took place in the Museum der Stadt Ratingen, Germany in 2008. The amorphous figures, the colour scheme, the surreal atmosphere and the fragmentary way in which Van Erp paints his figures, have consistently been compared to the work of Francis Bacon. Van Erp’s social and political involvement also draws a line to the work of Francisco Goya, in which he also stands up against violence, and human suffering.

Steven Aalders (b.1959, Netherlands) is known for his geometric, abstract oil paintings that incorporates traces of Mondrian’s modernism and American minimalism. Aalders studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, at Croydon College of Art in London and at the Ateliers in Haarlem. In 1986 he additionally won the Royal Award in Painting. Since then he has had solo exhibitions in Belgium, Stedelijk Museum voor Aktuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in 2002, at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in 2010, and most recently at the Van Gogh Museum (2020) and the Kröller Müller Museum (2021). His body of work is an attempt to remap and interpret the tradition of art history in a personal way. He connects typical modernist principles such as repetition and working in series with older traditions in art. Aalders additionally draws on reality, a nature experience, or a fragment from a book, as sources of inspiration that are converted into abstract paintings – reduced in a personal way to the essence.

Credits: On The Inside realized and curated this exhibition in close collaboration with Cees Hendrikse and the artists. On The Inside would like to thank for their kind support: Steven Aalders, Aaron van Erp, Cees Hendrikse, Henk Pijnenburg, Rudi Fuchs, Slewe Gallery, Henk Visch, Melle Hendrikse, Livingstone Gallery, Elisabeth Skjervheim and Jamie Hooper.