Thomas Sadée
Fluidity of painting
In my work I challenge the rules and boundaries of painting.
For example, by removing the canvas from its frame, showing you how it is hanged and breaking the one-sided approach.
In this way the medium is not bound to a simple format, shape or style and breaks with former essentialistic and mystical ideas about this old medium.
Mostly clear
In the flags, the format of painting is being challenged in new ways.
Where a painting normally is approached from one side, the flag is two sided.
The fabric is thin and lets the paint drip through the material. In this way you can reproduce a brush stroke. By reproducing the brushstroke there is a break with the romance and uniqueness of the single brush stroke.
Also, the stiffness of the canvas material is lost in the flags. They move in the wind and let light passes through them. This way there is a break with the opaque painting, the painting is not definitive. The painting plays a changing role with its surroundings.
There is also an absurd dialogue between flag and painting. Where the flag refers to something totally different than the colours and shapes on the fabric, the painting refers to itself with its shapes and colours. This dialogue between representing the other or representing itself creates a movement of an external and internal representation.
The flags are in dialogue with themselves and the history of painting, there for I don’t want them to be influenced by my own judgement of the image. The image is a tool, like a stroke of a brush, and not a subject of representation. There for I use a random image generator on the internet that delivers random images. This creates a distance between my personal interests and the representation found on the images. This distance makes it more interesting and easier to work with the images as a tool.
Light rain
The one-sided approach is also challenged in this work.
The canvas is stripped of its hard frame and hanged on itself in space.
There is nothing hidden, neither the frame nor the hanging device.
The white frame on one side plays with the frame normally hidden behind the canvas.
Also, the idea of movement is present, where normally a large painting is hard to move and has a permanent look on the wall. This work can be rolled up and be carried on your shoulder (as I do). With all this there is a break with the massive and solid character of a painting on the frame.
The patterns work as a game, the layering creates depth, but by putting patterns on top of makes it flat.
Where patterns and shapes can refer to the essentialistic approach of the modernist, the bright almost neon colours makes it a parison of their idea’s.