Petzel is pleased to present Soft Sun, an exhibition of new paintings by Amsterdam-based artist Rezi van Lankveld, on view at the gallery’s Upper East Side location from February 16 to March 26. The show marks van Lankveld’s fourth with the gallery and her first in five years in New York City.

The paintings featured in Soft Sun are made in the spirit and the excitement of viewing the unknown. They express the idea of the infinite potential image and are impressions of the internal experience that takes place through observation: a short circuit in the brain, like déjà vu; seeing one thing in a flash and in the same flash that thing becomes something else.

If there would be a motif in van Lankveld’s paintings, it would be this visual encounter with the unexpected, which is ultimately about movement in painting. The artist seeks to capture the moment of metamorphosis. Viewers will notice both a continuation and an advancement of van Lankveld’s signature figurative yet abstract style in these new and intimate paintings.

The small-scale Soft Sun works evoke visions of landscapes, or perhaps dreamscapes, each subject to one’s unique perception. Light is a constant throughout the Soft Sun series, which van Lankveld describes as having been composed with techniques similar to that of her previous work but with a newfound density.

Here, van Lankveld places focus on detail, but with compositions that exude roughness and an air of spontaneity. Every van Lankveld painting is singular and requires a long process to achieve their finished state. Van Lankveld is not necessarily telling a story through her paintings.

Van Lankveld rather composes each canvas in a way that suggests a choreography of forms that come together in a highly constructed manner. More than anything, van Lankveld wants to impress the expressive nature of the Soft Sun works upon the viewer, with no need for guesswork beyond each painting’s image. 

Rezi van Lankveld is known for the mode of painting that combines abstraction and figuration, chance and determination. She has shown extensively throughout Europe. Recent solo exhibitions include Office Baroque, Brussels, Belgium (2020); Reset, Borgloon, Belgium (2019); The Approach, London (2018); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2015); FIAC, Paris (2014); among others.

Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Palazzo de’Toschi, Bologna (2020); Annet Gelink, Amsterdam (2019); Root Canal, from De Ateliers, Amsterdam (2018); The Approach, London (2017); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016); and many others.

Van Lankveld’s work is included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Rabobank Art Collection, The Netherlands; The Art Collection of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago, and the Zabludowicz Collection, London and New York. Rezi van Lankveld graduated from Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht in 1999. She lives and works in Amsterdam.