House of Govers by Franz Hempel

At first glance, spaces open up: architectures are at the center of the works of Theun Govers, which are painterly explorations and artistic constructions rather than technical drawings. Objects (triangles, squares, or circles) of elementary geometry, which, in contrast to analytical geometry, are oriented toward visualisation and thus show themselves to be pictorial, prove to be structuring elements in the composition of his paintings. The small formats are characterised by a play with perspectives and depths. Stages are created, a theatrical space in which the introduced geometric figures move in and out. The surface of the paintings can be read as a fourth wall, which through its transparency redeems its imaginative character to the viewer. Pictorial planes, foregrounds and backgrounds overlap. Content and form meet in layering as an image-constituting practice: a repeated application of color within a sepia spectrum creates a material depth that is reflected in the different vanishing points. Compositions repeat themselves. Repetition repeatedly becomes motif. Grids and patterns, repetitive expressions per se, establish themselves as an independent image series alongside the views of interiors described at the outset. Individual forms are taken up across the paintings, and scaled details become main subjects in a new frame. Lines dominate, marking mainly triangles and squares at different angles and along different mirror axes. Govers’ pictorial worlds are sometimes two-dimensional representations of three-dimensionally impossible objects. Do they therefore appear uninhabitable? For although the architectures in the painterly works present themselves as man-made realities, the pictorial personnel remains geometric-formal as opposed to human-figurative. This absence creates the impression of the abandoned, eventually growing into something uncanny. The German word “unheimlich” (uncanny) can be derived from something negatively related to the “heim” (as house, as home). In his book The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely, the art and architecture historian Anthony Vidler also writes about this. While Govers’ paintings have been related to Lewis Carroll‘s Alice in Wonderland in the past, another literary reference is introduced here as a reading of the work: in the multi-layered, non-linearly narrated novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, the protagonists of the Navidson family are confronted with the fact that the house they live in is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. As the story unfolds, moreover, an eerie, endless labyrinth opens up at the heart of the house. Govers’ serial paintings of spatial constructions with distorted perspectives could be interpreted as visualisations of similar premises. In his oeuvre, the uncanny is juxtaposed with something very homely: wallpaper as a central object, which, as already indicated in the description of the grid-like and pattern-like, also establishes itself as an independent trope emancipating itself from the walls. The frame of these images thereby delimit sections of something that repeats itself infinitely beyond. A wallpaper also hints to a second layer, pointing to something that lies hidden behind it. Its decorative character can be seen as a disguising and distraction of the gaze. Here, the floral, both abstracted and elaborated, mixes into the works and the color palette shifts increasingly into the pastel. Repetition becomes repeatedly visible as pattern. Points of reference for the individual elements are signs of our shared everyday world: observations of the artist, abstractions of company logos. Govers’ appropriation focuses less on their connotations or a marketing-oriented recognition value than on the formal qualities of the symbols. In the artist’s more recent works, the walls eventually begin to crumble, structures break down: organic forms haunt the spaces. It also reveals a break with the artist’s own system, his own, often time-intense way of working, which takes on a different temporal structure, and paintings reach their completion sooner. Free form finding meets geometrical line layout in straight angles. For the artist himself also a moment of liberation, a further development of his visual vocabulary, the possibility of leaving something behind. Looking back ahead at the end: the House of Govers as a House of Leaves.