Artist:		Hans Deuss
Technique:		oilpaint
Date of exhibition:		May 4 - June 10, 2001

Solo-exhibition Hans Deuss

The world has, of course, been completely charted. The earth is covered with a network of which the meshes can be tightened so strong that even the mail that's on your desk could be caught in coordinates. And if necessary: be read. But thanks to painters like Hans Deuss it is still possible today to make old-fashioned explorative expeditions.

If you allow yourself to be plunged into his works, you will visit unknown territories, once ruled by mighty cultures, but at present under vegetable rule, places where exotic buildings are crumbling due to the fact that the wind has deposited tiny seeds in hairline cracks. For these strange seeds once they have germinated can easily break down even the most powerful strongholds. Such a painter must be a man of the world, a seafarer, an explorer, for how else could he transform his fantasies in such credible worlds?

The second life | zoom |

However, nothing could be further from the truth. Hans Deuss was not only born and bred in Amsterdam; he has never moved to another city and even still lives in the very same street where his cradle stood in 1948. From there he cycled with his grandfather to the ports of Amsterdam every Sunday, and back home he thumbed through old books full of snapshots of massive temples and far horizons. Perhaps there lay the roots of his dreamed oeuvre.

De traffic-jam, Hans Deuss, 1999, o/p

The attic studio suffices for the painter. As do small pieces of paper, sometimes no more than a shred. On those he draws the outlines of his destination. In black and white, like in the he old photograph-books. When the destination has a strong enough appeal, he will continue his journey with oil paint on panel. He will travel past overgrown structures and will mount steps that end in nothingness. Nature versus culture, and the latter will always lose in the works of Hans Deuss.

Is his work a indictment against human activitiy? Partly. Deus is not a born pessimist, but he likes to put man in his natural order. One can see the same things happening in the old ports of Amsterdam: if places are abandoned by man, mosses will take over in no time and walls will tumble as young trees germinate in the cracks. And through the seemingly indestructible asphalt vulnerable blades shoot up. The power of life, the art of surviving.