Michel Hoogervorst

How can something be just right and at the same time completely wrong? It is an observation that also seems to apply to the work of Hoogervorst which is at once organized and organic; according to plan and plant-based; tight and loose; static and mobile; light-hearted and rigid; drawing and symbol. Is it about life and death? Is it about surviving? What is the significance of the many flowers in his work? Was the flower on this canvas cut with the knife from the other canvas? A link with Sassenheim and the bulb-growing area might be an obvious one since it is the area where Hoogervorst was born and bred. It is also the place where the Sikkens paint factory is situated. Flowers and paint, what more could one want. Hoogervorst does not paint bulb fields and flower arrangements but rather single blooms. He also captures the bulb from which the flower grows, the knife with which it is cut and the brush with which it is painted. These are all symbols of his visual language. The flowers are monochrome, usually black, the colours they once had recede into the background which also sometimes becomes the foreground. The lively interplay of lines contrasts with the organic floral motives, an overlaid geometry that sometimes also endows new life: from the horizontal and vertical lines that are painted over the flower motif a bud, leaf or brush sometimes sprouts. That is how life is passed on, by continuing in the next layer. Fragment from the text 'Come in stranger' written by Gijsbert Dijker published in the book 'Guess things happen that way' (2017)