At first glance, you wouldn't say so, but Wouter Nijland's work hangs together from coincidences. Literally. Just like daily life, his main source of inspiration. The artist himself determines only the boundary conditions of his canvases, such as format and grid. After that, he leaves all space to chance. The angle of inclination of a line? For that, a handle is placed in a black bucket of marbles, numbered from 1 to 360 with an engraving pen. Is a plane colored in? A tossed coin, bouncing across the floor of his studio, determines it: yes or no. And if the verdict is “yes,” it remains to be decided whether that filling in will be done with horizontal or vertical brushstrokes. Again, a coin makes the judgment. Coincidence also plays a role in his use of color. He uses about ten different colors of oil paint, all of which he mixes to black. By eye, by the light that enters his studio at that moment. No black is the same; it depends, for example, on the base color, the brush strokes, the thickness of the application and the weather outside. Each surface has its unique shade and the black ensures that the viewer is not distracted by emotions and associations that distinct colors simply evoke.
Wouter Nijland has been using this working method since 2006. At the time, he was in the final phase of his education at Minerva Academy in Groningen. He felt that merely implementing his own ideas was not enough. Something was missing. By adding something bigger such as coincidence, universal and from outside his own world of thought, his work only felt complete. Art as actual everyday life. Dreams, wishes, ambitions are your own framework, whether they are fulfilled and how, is mostly determined by chance. Something great and beautiful like love? Coincidence. Even a planned working day in his studio, can turn out very differently because of a flu-ridden son or call from a friend with a nice invitation. Control is never complete, balance never lasts. In life and thus in his work.
But what is coincidence to Wouter Nijland? He distinguishes three concepts. Statistics, he says, is for the control freaks, fate for the religious and chance is for the playful man. For the person who likes to be surprised, who is willing to let go of control, but still bears his own responsibility. A consequence of his vision and working method is that every work he starts is also finished. The artist himself does not determine whether something is right or wrong or beautiful or ugly. As a viewer, you can get delightfully lost in the framed coincidences of Wouter Nijland. And that is exactly what he has in mind. In that respect, Nijland finds serendipity an intriguing concept: getting lost and finding something else than what you were looking for. He once read a nice explanation of that term: you look for a needle in a haystack and get out with the farm girl.
- Text by Pierre Carrière -
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Wouter Nijland