Flatland Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition ‘Paper’ by Dutch artist Janpeter Muilwijk; a solo show that includes new pencil and gouache drawings with that famous ‘Matisse-like’ feeling. ‘Paper’, the title, has much to do with the artist’s love for the qualities of the medium: the patience, the blankness (unprejudiced) and its absorbent feature. ‘Paper’ implicates as well that what used to be fuzzy can be made clear. And from the historical point of view, the word ‘Paper’ implies ‘foreverness’. Historical documents of more than 2000 years old, such as the written command “Let it be done” by Cleopatra, have proven to be of significant meaning for so many generations.
For the artist these features (patience, absorbing features, clarity, continuity) have a place to stay in his ideal of an original and pure world. His drawings give us access to a contemplative life, calm and different than today's mundane world. To say it differently, in a world that has come adrift his drawings form a window to a blissful universe that renders comfort or at least a moment of peace. Perhaps even a tiny moment of the feasibility of uncomplicated happiness. Often his figures seem to float in a vacuum or are seated in the narrow frame, which arouses this very good feeling: His drawings often seem to be carved from soft stone, from Africa, where the origin of man began.