At first glance you would not say, but the work of Wouter Nijland (b. 1980) depends on chance. Literally. Just like everyday life, which is his main inspiration. The artist determines only the conditions of his paintings, such as size and grid. After that he leaves it all to chance.
The slope of a line? A bucket full of marbles numbered by 1 to 360 decides. Will a patch be colored? A coin toss will answer the question with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And if the verdict is ‘yes’, it then has to be decided whether to fill it with horizontal or vertical brush strokes. Again the coin decides.
In his use of color chance plays a decisive role as well. Nijland uses ten different colors of oil paint, all of which he mixes to black. On the eye, with daylight that enters his studio at that moment as his helper. No black is the same; it depends, for example, by its base color, the brush strokes, the thickness of the application and the weather outside. Each patch has therefore its unique color. The color black also ensures that the beholder is not distracted by emotions and associations evoked by any pronounced use of color.
Ever since 2006 Nijland is working with this system, just when he was finishing his last year at the Minerva Academy of Arts in Groningen (NL). Simply executing his own ideas wasn’t enough for the young artist. Something was missing. By adding something which was bigger than himself, like the definition of chance, which is universal and beyond his own imagination, made his work felt complete.