Avery Preesman originates from a musical background. In the early ’90s, the self-taught artist has the opportunity to study at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, where he is recognized for revitalizing abstract painting. In ’94, he secures the second place in the Prix de Rome competition, and from ’96 to 2006, he exhibits internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent and with a traveling exhibition in America. He wins several other awards and resides at Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Texas. After 2006, he becomes less prominent in the art scene.
Preesman’s body of work can be divided into drawings and paintings. The artist himself does not divide his oeuvre, but refers to it as “pictorial sculptures.” “However plastic and sculptural my work may be, it is always created from a painter’s perspective,” he asserts. According to Preesman, the small painting ‘Bellamyplein’ (1992) was a defining piece that influenced all his subsequent paintings and sculptures. It is based on photos of the eponymous square in Amsterdam and demonstrates Preesman’s eye for architectural structures.
From the outset, Preesman’s paintings bear a heavy paint mass. Sometimes he incorporates coconuts or beans onto and into his canvases. His works have a solid feel, composed of thick layers. Within those layers, Preesman scratches as if he wants to liberate the space between them. It appears as though he wants to treat paintings simultaneously as carriers of imagery and as objects. Occasionally, his works feature letters or fragments of text. For instance, the letter ‘T’ references architecture: the symbol combines a vertical supporting element with a horizontal load-bearing element. The artist also draws parallels to how hip-hop musicians manipulate language, sound, and rhythm.
Through his exploration of space within the painting, Preesman quickly liberates it from traditional constraints. In ’93, he creates the first of his characteristic cage-like wall sculptures: straight or slanted wooden beams or metal profiles joined together in an open structure, with the ribs wrapped in a rich mixture of plaster with sand and/or cement. Preesman aims to avoid his artworks occupying all the available space, reserving space for our gaze. Hans Den Hartog Jager once wrote that Preesman “inflates the lines in his paintings into the third dimension and develops them as ‘concrete line systems.’ By pushing abstraction from the second into the third dimension, the works can claim real space and do not remain trapped in an illusionistic
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