Hyperplane

A solo show at NeumanWolfsonArt

October 23 – November 30 2019

Neumann Wolfson Art is pleased to announce the opening of Hyperplane, a solo exhibition featuring a new body of work by Michael Van Den Besselaar. The show will run through November 30, 2019.

Michael Van Den Besselaar combines futuristic design aesthetics with abstract forms to create layered, confusing spaces within an architectural framework. He conjures a nostalgic longing for the past’s vision of utopian futures. The spaces Van Den Besselaar creates are uncanny, spiraling outward and folding inward. The work in Hyperplane visualizes disordered structures in multidimensional spaces. Hyperplane is a geometrical term, described as a subspace whose dimension is on less than its ambient space. If this space is three dimensional, it’s hyperplanes become two dimensional. Van Den Besselaar constructs these spaces to radically break with the idea of a “painting as a window” and investigate the complex structures in which we now live. Although this new body of work still has a strong architectural influence, his abstract, chaotic iconographies reflect the undefined times we find ourselves in today. 

Van Den Besselaar’s shapes are connected atectonically and illogically. Viewers must approach the works with several distinct perspectives and our eye is never put to rest. Three-dimensional spaces evolve into two-dimensional planes as perceptions of depth and breadth are contorted, shrunken and exploded. Light and reflections within these constructions bend, curve and bounce over interstitial zones. Van Den Besselaar’s construction of absurd, unstable space evokes a sense of impenetrability and volatility, which mirror today’s social, political and environmental conditions. At the same time, these works are playful color explosions with an optimistic worldview.  

Van Den Besselaar connects his spatial constructions to Lacan’s concept Borromean knots. Borromean knots are a group of three rings, which do not intersect and are linked in such a way that if any one of them are severed, all three become separated. Lacan uses this image to write about the orders of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary. Each ring represents one of the orders. They depend on each other and among them there is no prioritization of one over another. Objective reality, collective experiences, symbols, signifiers, utopian visions and internalized idealization are interrelated and interdependent. Van Den Besselaar illustrates this metaphor through his creations of winding, knotted topographies and multi-panel works that create alternative sculptural spaces and deny hierarchical organization.