Niels 'Shoe' Meulman: Unmovement

By driving over expensive spray cans with a car or by casually burning freshly made canvases, Shoe reenacts the arrogance of capitalism, in a neoliberal world where sourcing painting tools is a luxury to many. This nonchalant attitude is an ironic take to the current socioeconomic climate, as well as a hint to the contemporary status of the art world, often seen as increasingly elitist.

 

In Shoe’s works, the car (a 1992 Buick Park Avenue) is used as a brush, it’s a utensil, whose traces create a pattern, a sign that is here, however, not merely an index: the car is central to the process, presented in its glory as evident source and testimony of the pictorial signs.

 

A video of the creation of the canvases, by long-time collaborator Sander Lanen, is featured in the show: the engine of the car rumbles, the spray cans are aggressively torn apart and spill color on the white surfaces, that are cut and purge like open wounds. The performative aspect central to this specific working method is reminiscent of a long line of action painters from the twentieth century, in movements like the Art Autre or the so called Informal Art.

 

From artist Tapiès, who implemented different ‘poor’ materials in his work, to Pollock, who introduced a different kind of brushing through his leaking technique, up to the interactive approach of the Japanese Gutai group, the site specificity of Shoe’s action painting explores not only the pictorial residues left on the canvases, but also the spatial aspect of the making process. Even the burning of the canvases, reminiscent of the ‘Combustioni’ by Alberto Burri, among others, testifies of Shoe’s attempt to take bits of art historical practices in order to then transpose them into the contemporary.

 

The strokes created by the car wheels can also be seen as a further development in Shoes’s own practice. Internationally known for his graffiti art, Shoe started to experiment with calligraphy and created his Calligraffiti; an experimentation concerning the nature and the aesthetics of the written language.