Ben Vollers

 A Dialogue in paint

In 2006 Ben Vollers and Fons Heijnsbroek started to paint together. Same spot, same moment, on the same canvas.  What started as a one-stand afternoon performance grew out into a rather unusual, intensive dialogue-in-paint between the two Dutch abstract painters. They knew each other for 15 years already very well, but this was the first time they started to paint together, making one canvass together. In the last two years they painted 30 big paintings together, and they developed a lot of confidence and freedom during their common painting practice. 

Ben and Fons paint personally abstract and expressive and like to use their direct visual impulses coming into the painting. This is the basic ground in their cooperation. Beside they love abstract expressionistic art and discussed a lot all the former painters who gave shape to this area of painting. Both artists also share their love for the city of Amsterdam and its modern visual dynamics. And perhaps it is a gift that both love the jazz. Also mutual: they want to incorporate in their art the unknown, the not preconceived, not predictable. There is to find what they mean fort the other during the common painting: in a mutual way they are the unknown for the other. Every moment during the painting the development of the painting is unsure because of ‘the other one’, who is allowed to change the whole painting. So they accept they are dependent on the other and painting itself is the language to communicate: to ask for or to define, to make statements or withdraw them, to argue, to destroy or to affirm. The definite result of the image is for sure when both agree the painting is finished.

In Avallon the two artists will show a selection of 25 paintings they made together in the last two years. But that is only one part of their exposition. The other part is that they will paint in Avallon, la Fabrique. Together a collection of new paintings, with as ‘motif’ the river Le Cousin, and its borders. They feel themselves in a broader tradition, as Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell who were abstract-expressionist but nevertheless very fascinated by the Water lilies of Monet, so they came to France to search them alive.
Ben and Fons are Dutch painters and very familiar with the Dutch humid atmosphere and natural light. The river Le Cousin gives them a double landscape because its water reflects the borders and the overhanging trees. It will be a challenge for them to catch the atmosphere around Le Cousin and all the reflecting images.