Painting From The Inside Out With Christian Van Minnen
Strange—the sensation one gets when confronted with mounds of bruised, tumorous flesh, mingled with various forbidden fruits, festering produce, and delicious looking gummy forms. Such is the kind of disorienting cornucopia that Christian Rex van Minnen brings to the table. Gazing into these luscious assortments, we just may feel tempted to reach out and give them a squeeze. Yet, on second thought, perhaps best not, lest we be willing to deal with the kind of tainted residue that won’t wash off easily.
Van Minnen has spent much of his life closely observing obscure details within the natural world, seeing correlations and expressions in places likely deemed trivial by most eyes.
“I have always been a surrealist, finding inexhaustible joy in doodling and watching for things to emerge, natural forms and suggestive physiologies that carry a preternatural emotional content that transcends life itself,” says the California-based artist. Indeed, he seems to take his observations and breathe into them a new dimension of life—one that registers both familiar yet unsettling, existing in another realm altogether. Intuiting intermediary worlds of this kind requires a certain level of psychic engagement and interrelatedness with one’s internal and external environments. “I think nature, tidepools, and Golden Field Guides are foundational. My parents kept my attention on nature at all times, and also gave me language and confidence to listen closely to my heart, to pursue inner knowledge,” he adds.
Van Minnen is very specific about the way he conjures his compositions—it’s a deliberate process, which paradoxically tries to steer clear of deliberation. When in painting mode, he prefers a stream-of-consciousness approach, as in true surrealism, while at the same time using technical devices which ultimately render an eye pleasing picture. It seems to be a delicate balance, of which he further explains, “My definition of surrealism is that it begins with automatic drawing or mark making. The emphasis is placed on physical action and expediency rather than intellect and planning. Maintaining connection to the subconscious in this way is a lifelong practice, not unlike meditation. This is kind of a fundamentalist view of surrealism, and I rarely practice it perfectly. It’s usually some combination of this automatic process and conscious interaction.”
He has perceptively broken this down into “the play between three points: one, intuition; two, counter-intuition creates a binary; and three, perpendicular creates a triangle, the ‘left field’ action, giving three general options in the creative act. My paintings look like a combination of these three.”
Gazing upon his immaculate craft work, we can’t help but wonder from what region of the subconscious his figures (whose features appear smeared and possibly disease ridden) have emerged. Did they drift in from a bad dream, or did they once walk the earthly domain until struck with a severe case of bad luck?
“The distortion of faces assumes a face was distorted, whereas what I am trying to do is make an emotional human connection with a portrait who doesn’t exist, out of marks and familiarity. Those three points come into play. Intuition, in the context of portraiture, is synonymous with pareidolia, an inherent human behavior to sort out facial features in things other than faces, like clouds, rocks, wood, etc. Therefore, the counterintuitive mark is one that resists that intuitive, pareidolian response. All this comes down to brush work. The third point, the perpendicular, is harder to pin down but you know it when you see it [laughs].”
So now that we understand some of the methodology behind his imagery, we are led to another crucial question: What’s with all the gummies? Again, his explanation for this isn’t the nonchalant, candy popping in mouth kind, but a highly analytical one. “I can give a clear account of how that theme came into play. In 2013 I was continuing my experiments in grounds and indirect painting techniques, and more specifically the pros/cons of the Northern Renaissance approach and that of the Italians. Namely Titian, and his use of mid-tone ground as a beginning point, allowing the artist to more easily shift the position of the figure in progress—essentially a technique that allowed for a little more room to change things.”
These quests led him to another point of interest—the question of how to achieve radiance from within and without an object. As his studies continued, he found a way to harness all those qualities at once: “[A] white oil ground as a starting point created the greatest conditions for getting luminosity out of transparent pigments, bright earth suspended in light filled oil. I was at that time experimenting with creating a hybrid of the two. A mixed ground, which I currently use,” he says.
The brightly lit gummies became his technical solution to certain visual challenges, but beyond that, also help tie all his other components together on a variety of levels. “I also want to see contrast in every way possible, not just light and dark, but also emotionally, texturally, spiritually. I needed something that really stood in contrast to the heavy, melancholic, chiaroscuro forms, and these luminous, chromatically intense, whimsical, and weightless forms provided this contrast. These shapes are the same automatic drawing, just on large sheets of stickers that I cut out, and become the gummies.” It is this lifelong fascination with visual manipulation, mixed with the pursuit of excellence, which has led Van Minnen to become a master of his craft, so much so that we can almost forget we are peering into a flat image. We may even overlook the fact that these fresh, surrealistic worlds share a link with an agelong, obscure tradition in art.
When we think of the word grotesque, images of foul, monstrous, and even mutilated forms easily come to mind. Yet in art, this description carries with it many nuanced layers. It can point to the bizarre and whimsical, as in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Or raw expressions of disturbing human emotion, as demonstrated by Edvard Munch. It has even been used as a tool for political satyr in addressing the more so ugly facets of society at large.
Early examples of this broad art style can be traced back to Ancient Roman times, most prominently as a form of architecture that featured intricate details and distorted figurations of man, beast, and plant. Throughout its history, grotesque art has often been shunned by general audiences as being ridiculous. Yet it has always managed to reemerge through various manifestations, creeping its way into our periphery and lingering there uninvited. The truth is, we seem to crave the reminder that inner life carries with it an air that is strange, mysterious, and fantastical, no matter how prim and proper things appear on the outside. Whether we want to or not, we love the grotesque. Only recently has this fact become more readily embraced, as we encounter it in numerous manners of contemporary art. Yet few techniques capture these sentiments as uniquely as Van Minnen.
“At the end of the day I am always looking to make these paintings even more intense, (with) higher contrasts in every way, shape and form, more textured, more potent, because that is how I experience this life we all share. It is fucking intense, beautiful and wrenching, and sublime. It’s not subtle, in my experience. But who knows, maybe that will come.”
Heavy subject matter aside, if we just focus on Van Minnen’s textures alone, there is an endless range for our imaginative fingers to explore. His softs are so soft that they border on the ethereal, nearly beyond touch. His chewies look like they might bounce a million times before stubbornly settling on the tongue. The raised, swollen lines of a fresh tatt across the skin reach our eyes with a sting. Strand by delicate strand, locks of silky hair frame his near-human subjects. And the harshness of his marbled, pock-marked walls unifies the dimension of all those other qualities.
“I ALSO WANT TO SEE CONTRAST IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE, NOT JUST LIGHT AND DARK, BUT ALSO EMOTIONALLY, TEXTURALLY, SPIRITUALLY…”
The amount of detail to be found in Van Minnen’s work is mind boggling—one could spend hours visually turning over the stones of one of his epic organic-hybrid arrangements, only to return and find yet more elements left unscrutinized. Given the consistent breadth and quality of his output, for well over a decade now, it’s easy to recognize not only his passion but also a highly disciplined work ethic.
“I belong to a family so my schedule is tight!” says Van Minnen. Aside from those rigorous, peak weeks leading up to a show, he keeps to a regular workflow of eight-hour painting sessions on weekdays, while “making time for meditation/mindfulness and exercise for me and my dog Pepper.” On whether he requires a certain atmosphere or headspace with which to channel his otherworldly spirits, he says, “It’s so hard to count on the right mindset. I have a process that is staggered and diverse enough that I can usually find a way to get to work no matter the energy I bring, which varies dramatically.”
THE DISTORTION OF FACES ASSUMES A FACE WAS DISTORTED, WHEREAS WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO IS MAKE AN EMOTIONAL HUMAN CONNECTION WITH A PORTRAIT WHO DOESN’T EXIST, OUT OF MARKS AND FAMILIARITY.”
His recent series La Luz Atrapada, currently on view at Veta Galeria in Madrid, yields further feasts for the eyes, including unique versions of the customary still life. Within these, bright bouquets of various oddities, alien-like gummies and unidentifiable tendrils explode from vases, mounted within classical window alcoves. It’s all too absurd. As for his portraits, they are composed in the traditional, Old Masters sense, albeit with faces most certainly defaced, blistered and contorted as if channeling spirits from the underworld.
When asked what latest challenge Van Minnen has on the agenda, he shares “I’m learning to paint large canvases, which feels like learning painting all over again. It’s another layer of complexity in balancing planning and spontaneity, or surreality.” As for how his work might thematically evolve over the years, some of that will be guided by his unending, technical obsessions with mastering the brush. The rest will be up to that surge of free-flowing images which, from the depths of his phantasmagorical mind, shall imminently writhe their way to the surface.*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 71, which is still available in print here.
Currently on view at Gauntlet Gallery in San Francisco is "Au9usto" — as the title suggests, a playful group show featuring nine artists with a penchant for experimentation. There's the dark surrealism of Wednesday Kirwan, a fully-functional guillotine sculpture by Sam Lamott and heavily tattooed vintage celebrity portraits by Cheyenne Randall. Bennett Slater offers an irreverent take on neo-Classicism, Justin Hopkins distorts perspectives and Rebecca Adams takes us into a Richter-esque time warp. Take a look at some of the works in the show and catch the exhibition on view through September 20.
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