Untitled (Egg trays)

In The Netherlands and Germany in 2015 much attention is paid to artists who were associated with the ‘Nul-groep’ and ZERO movement. In April 2015 we visited the exhibition 50 years of ZERO: A Retrospective at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. In the early sixties ‘Nul-Groep’ and ZERO had prominent Dutch contributors. Even now, while working as artist in residence in New York we meet up again with the work of artists of the Zero group and in particular one which we most admire: Jan Schoonhoven.
Being in comparable circumstances, having little money to spent on materials and finding ourselves in a situation of having in our studio only a table, we venture to taste the similarities of the working condition of Jan Schoonhoven. That’s why and when we decided to make a tribute to Jan Schoonhoven during our residency in Queens, New York. The starting point in our studio is the camp table in our studio and a pile of cardboard. In this case egg trays.
The egg cartons have a dimpled form in which each dimple accommodates an individual egg and isolates that egg from eggs in adjacent dimples. This structure helps protect eggs against stresses exerted during transportation and storage by absorbing a lot of shock and limiting the incidents of fracture to the fragile egg shells. An egg carton has a regular structure which repeats itself, its relief-like and is manufactured from recycled paper and molded pulp by means of a mechanized papier-mâché process.
The project consists of four individual works all made of cardboard, paper, glue, acrylic paint. 4-slag/3-wijd 70x145x8cm, DotsandCrosses 29x49x8cm, 30 Pink Dots 29x30x8cm and Jonas 135x180x18cm on wooden stilts.

Jan Schoonhoven 1914-1994, Delft (NL) has become world famous for his sculptural reliefs and works on paper. recently there were two magnificent exhibitions with the works of Jan Schoonhoven in The Netherlands: the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and Museum Prinsenhof Delft. Jan Schoonhoven initially made mostly abstract drawings. From mid-1950 he discovered the possibilities of cardboard, to create reliefs. The informal style in which he works, eventually leads to his now famous, formal, white grid reliefs. These grid reliefs represent not so much the visible reality, but independent realities where the effect of light plays an important role. Rhythm of shadow and light.

Surrounded by his contemporaries and the emergence of new trends as nul and ZERO Schoonhoven develops his unique visual language. From 1960 to 1965 he takes part in the activities of the Dutch Nul-Groep. In 1967 he made together with Ad Dekkers and Peter Struycken part of the Dutch entry for the Biennale of Sao Paulo, where his work is awarded the second prize. This participation brings his international breakthrough. In order to be able to meet the increasing demand for his reliefs, Schoonhoven works for art production with studio assistants. Now his work is included worldwide in collections of important museums of contemporary art and among others, we stand eye to eye with his work at MoMA.

Schoonhoven was both an innovator and at the same time lived in a lower middle-class environment. Besides an artist Schoonhoven was for over 30 years a civil servant at the PTT (Royal Dutch Mail), and he was known for always arriving on time at work.
In his early carreer he produced his art-work in the living room after working hours. The white reliefs-works, which were meant to appear as anonymous as possible, were actually created at his dining table. The format of Schoonhoven’s reliefs-works for example, depended on not having much money to spent on materials and the size of the table.  Working at the living room table in his small Delft apartment, also determined the maximum size of the art-works.

Schoonhoven’s career shows that these counterpoints in flow of life, do not have to conflict, but they still make a striking contrast. It seemed his life was almost the opposite of that of one of his favorite American artist, Jackson Pollock. Who made savage, personal action paintings and lived a remarkable, bourgeois life. The contrast could not have been bigger between the Dutch artist and his American counterpart. The recently published monography on Jan Schoonhoven zooms in on Schoonhoven as an innovator. Meanwhile, the monography also gives away a slide of the lower middle-class-environment the Dutch artist lives in. Inevitable with the arrival of international connections in his growing network and the phenomenon of happenings, cracks start to appear: The changing times of the sixties. A well-known anecdote is that during a happening befriended artist Yayoi Kusama, painted Schoonhoven’s naked body full with colourful dots, while he is wearing nothing else than his socks and glasses. As serene as in his art, Schoonhoven himself remains cool and continues working as a civil servant for PTT until his retirement. Despite happenings and other such art scene events, that even cost him his yearly pay rise.