Artist Levi Van Veluw has created 3 “rooms” covered with more than 30000 wooden blocks, balls and slats respectively. Each“room” is executed as a life-size installation (4m x 2.5m x 2.5m) andwill be presented at the gallery together with photographs and videos. Portrayed in one piece is a desk, a table lamp, a bookcase. The edge of the table is burned by Levi van Veluw as he had an obsession for fire. All of these objects including every inch of the floor, walls and ceiling is covered in the same material: 14.000 16 cm2 dark brown wooden blocks. The blocks are made by the artist and glued on the wall one by one. The works suggest a narrative world behind the abstract portraits.
On the one hand these works present themselves as a continuation of Van Veluw’s formal approach to self-portraiture, with their preoccupation for materiality, pattern and texture. Yet they are simultaneously very personal pieces.
The repetitive structures recalls Van Veluw his youth and his obsessive attempts to gain control on his life by gaining control of his surroundings. Dimly light and dark in colour the overriding tone of these pieces are claustrophobic and sombre, exuding a sense of loneliness.
Themeticulous craftsmanship and high quality material with which every last knock and cranny is covered, result in a series of works that are also highly aesthetic. To know more about this artist, visit www.levivanveluw.com
