For the final months of Jeroen Erosie’s living mural in the Eye, curator-in-training Abril Cisneros Ramírez selected several works by painter and photographer JCJ Vanderheyden (Den Bosch, 1928–2012) from the Van Abbemuseum collection.
Both artists explore how lines show up on a surface. They also examine the role of perception, chance, and choices in the creating of images. In his paintings, Vanderheyden often worked from negative space. He made lines appear by placing colours side by side and observing their brightness. From the mid-1960s, he experimented with printing techniques, computer graphics, and electroacoustics. In his prints, the composition is both spontaneous and carefully arranged.
Vanderheyden wanted to show the things he saw every day in a new way. For him, artworks did not stand alone, but were always part of a larger whole. Making art was about finding and putting together existing things, like light reflecting off a mirror.
