Gijs van Lith Nederlands, b. 1984

Dutch artist Gijs van Lith (b. 1984) is recognized for his expansive visual practice that encompasses painting as well as sculpture, installations and drawing. Over the past fifteen years, van Lith has constantly reinvented his approach, creating a distinctive body of work that has ranged from modular, minimalist-style paintings (grid-paintings); to rough-hewn, heavily worked surfaces featuring the color red as main character. His versatile painterly oeuvre refers often to Abstract Expressionism, to, Willem De Koning and Cy Twombly or to Minimal Art, all with a very contemporarily distant.

Recently, however, Van Lith has developed a new visual language that is entirely his own and also produced a dialogue between his canvases front and back-side of painting. Everyday life and memories are surfacing or better said ‘’pushing softly thru’’ the interaction of color, material, line and gesture of the painting. A hint of pictographic and abstract elements; to recent refined and layered compositions that explores a balance between personal and the formal or conscious and subconscious. The artist has consistently explored the possibilities of certain formal elements—such as color, line and materiality—combining references that are art historical, cultural, and personal to create work that is characterized by a vivid interplay between the formally composed and considered, and the spontaneous and intuitive.

Gijs van Lith’s process is very open, all most like improv. Distance and time are important factors, that provide clarity and the freedom to act and react on what’s in front of him. ‘time mutes out; rush, ego and gives me a clear image’. His recent series he calls the process ‘schmearing’. He works intensively, energetically and relays on his intuition. ‘Somehow when I paint these new works I stumble into memories and the mondain. It surprises me,and catches me off guard. Its like a reflection all of the sudden looking back at you’.

The paintings are either softly exploding gestures or almost manically painted and layer on top of layer. In fact, these canvases seem to be made of flesh and muscles and at the same time appear satisfied and content, not frenetic. The works are buildup with interaction of thin layers of paint with removed, destroyed layers and gestures that cover the surface. Van Lith delves deeper and more freely into a fundamental aspect in his research, namely the spatial rhythm of color, shape and gestures. The result is an energetic and dynamic series work that oscillates between joy and awareness and between conscious and subconscious.

Gijs van Lith received his education at the art academy AKV St Joost in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (NL). After earning his bachelor’s degree, he obtained his master’s degree at the same academy a few years later in 2013. The work of Gijs van Lith quickly caught the attention of the artistic world; the artist has been nominated for several prestigious prizes for young artists and in 2009 he won the Thieme Art Young Talent Award. Meanwhile, his work is also gaining international prominence and is being included in national and international private and corporate collections. His work is also part of public art collection of Het Noord Brabants Museum. He has previously exhibited in New York, London, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Brussels, London, Antwerp, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Van Lith was also invited for a recidency in Koln at Lesien Art Foundation and at the CCA Andratx in Mallorca. He exhibited a monumental installation during his solo-exhibition at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in 2018. And Van Lith has duo exhibition with Henk Visch at Het Noord Brabants Museum in the Netherlands in February 2020 and His solo exhibition at MOYA Museum in Breda in 2022. With two monumental paintings Van Lith exhibited together with Navid Nuur and Bruce Nauman at Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch.