Sometimes artists that came of age in the 60s prefer to stick to a medium and play with the same format for decades, applying the same formula to different materials. The temptation to break down the art experience in a semiotic reflection on discourse tends to lead in that direction, but even though Woody van Amen is clearly interested in pushing his own symbolic vocabulary to the fore, the pieces currently on show at Ron Mandos show a relatively wide range of figures and content.
Curiously enough, the profile of the Swiss Matterhorn mountain and the Chinese border are among the figurative leitmotifs recurring throughout, mysteriously linking two geographically and culturally distant regions of the world. The common denominator is the artist's fascination with both, especially in their inspiring natural landscapes: “Shan”, the title of Van Amen's first solo show in the Amsterdam gallery, and a recurring icon throughout the exhibition, in fact means “mountain”.
Woody van Amen, Double Trouble, collage on Chinese paper, 57 x 72 cm; Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.
The Eindhoven-born artist is particularly concerned with man, religion and nature, themes he also explored in his 2007 film Sources of Inspiration, a travelogue of his trips to South-East Asia. But despite his media eclecticism (the pieces on show range from collage to sculpture, from painting to installation), the artist's signature symbols also pop up through and through – most notably the “Shan” ideogram and the “taxat”, a shape derived from a Chinese symbol. The latter seems to be Van Amen's most recurring figure, appearing in the most varied of shapes: from a luminescent LED installation (which dominates one of the exhibition rooms) to a small collaged icon. (For those of you who've visited the cube buildings in Rotterdam, there is a taxat of Van Amen's right in front of them.)
While there are clear visual patterns throughout, the Ron Mandos show has of course its highs and lows. The painting pieces are definitely less captivating than the collages, for example, which sport iconic elements like painted faces, animals and geometric figures on abstract backgrounds. The psychedelic, nature-infused symbolism of these pieces is perhaps the most contemporary side of Van Amen's aesthetic, especially considering the abundance of howling wolves and deer – as well as floating triangles and fractals – that characterize today's hipster album covers. A tense chord between the American 60s and the globalized Internet mesh-up spree, some of the Dutch artist's artworks are quite intriguing.
Woody van Amen, installation view of SHAN 2013 at Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam; Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.
Overall, as a survey on some thirty years of work (from the 80s on) “Shan” is a rich collection, which populates the exhibition space with an unusual number of pieces compared to the average gallery show. This is of course a good thing, since the visitor has the chance to see several series of works with as many different themes, but on the other hand – made exception for the LED-powered taxat installation that I mentioned above – perhaps the multitude of small-scale pieces that crowd the gallery could have used some editing down, considering the redundancy of some of them.
(Image on top: Woody van Amen, SHAN 2013, 2013, neon and Perspex, 36 x 33 cm; Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.)
