Garn #5, 2020

Cees van Rutten studied graphic design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. His predilection for bright rhythmic structures comes unmistakably forward; the plane, rhythmically distributed, with a fascinating play of light and shadow, articulated in regular forms of stacked figures. Van Rutten likes subtle contrasts between regularity and distortions, between tight and frayed, tough and fragile, between smooth and rough, cut and torn. His work is of great simplicity. The art historian is inclined to look for schools in which the objects could fit and will refer to colleagues such as Jan Schoonhoven and Ad Dekkers, movements such as Nul or Zero. Movements that are characterized by a formal and distant impersonality, something you can not say about the work of Van Rutten. His interest in disruption and distortion, the ripple in the frequency, makes his work rather very personal and gives it a poetic dimension.