Tatjana Pieters

The work of Van Snick is characterized by extremely simple forms and by the constant use of the same colours. His colour scheme is representative for the direction in which Van Snick's oeuvre developed since the end of the 70's, deciding to concentrate on the use of the ten-color palette of red, yellow and blue (as main colors), orange, green and violet (as secondary colors), gold and silver (as colors with physical value) and black and white (as non-colors), in combination with geometric shapes, like squares and cubes.
Using the pure pigment, Van Snick maximizes the colour, challenging the viewer's perception of time and space. The tension between the intuïtive and the mathematic symbolizes how chaos is being structured by form. Van Snick consideres a painting to be much more than just a painted surface. The forms, objects and colours he uses never stand wholly alone. They are intimately related to the space in which they are situated and the physical experience of the viewer. By using simple and limited materials -which are always suffused with a desire for order- Van Snick attempts to describe the essence of life. His paintings, installations and sculptures research, analyse and create space by means of minimal expression.
For his first solo exhibition at our new space, Van Snick will set off a minimal presentation of new paintings & photography against the monumental architecture of the space.

Allies is a painting series of ten diptychs in which abstraction goes together with reality. Black, White, Colour - Black, Landscape, Colour. Departing from a night-day cycle in relation to colour, a recurrent element in Van Snicks oeuvre, the colour black is placed next to an 'image of landscape' that then shows the day. The day appears in different shades of undetermined landscapes next to the colour below. The abstract counterpart rather depicts the dual principle (black, versus white) with colour being the material nuance of this duality.
In the second series of diptychs the light blue colour of the day will relate an undetermined landscape by night with the colors of Van Snicks palette, and its abstract counterpart. The colors are like loose elements (modules) from nature. An intellectual and an intuïtive interpretation exist side by side reflecting the cosmic dichotomy, reality.

The Archive Revisited 1980-2012 is a series of manipulated digital prints taken from negatives of Van Snicks photography archive. Abstract surfaces are painted upon the picture, referencing Van Snicks colour concept. They reinvigorate the picture and make it readable on an universal level. The viewer looks through the abstraction at an image of reality even if it is long gone.