Solo show René Korten (NL)

René Korten (°1957 Horn, NL) live and works in Tilburg, NL.

Studied at the Moller Institute NLO Tehatex, Tilburg and the Academy for Art Education, Tilburg where he now teaches art. He exhibited in many galleries and  museums: Museum De Pont, Tilburg (NL), Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo (NL), TextielMuseum, Tilburg (NL), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (NL), Museum Jan Cunen, Oss (NL), Museum Nagele (NL), Stedelijk Museum Roermond (NL), Museum Waterland, Purmerend (NL), Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen (NL), Museo do Douro, Alijó (PT), National Gallery Annex, Cape Town (ZA), IKOB Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Eupen (BE), Stedelijk Museum Aalst (BE).

His works are included in the collections of Museum van Bommel van Dam Venlo, IKOB Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Eupen, Museum Jan Cunen Oss, Museum Belvédère Heerenveen and in many public and private international collections .

With Korten, painting is a process involving an alternation of action and reaction, immediacy and reflection. While allowing, in one phase, the fluid paint to find its own way or aiming, in his manner of painting, for a seemingly messy nonchalance, in the subsequent phase he regains control and experiments extensively with the placement of a line or the undulations of a contour, as small shifts can make all the difference. Testing the visual potential of opposing elements, Korten approaches painting as a bridled free-rein activity. (......)

The two aspects that he wishes to bring together in his paintings—the formal and the organic, the constructed and the spontaneous, form and color, the concrete and the associative—can be reduced to the polarity culture/nature. We often treat these as opposites, but can a sharp dividing line actually be drawn between the two? Isn't the point at which they meet and overlap more interesting? Korten is fascinated with that diffuse area.

(Hanneke de Man in catalogue 'René Korten - Diver's Eye')