Nelleke Beltjens: Apparently

In her sixth solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, Dutch artist Nelleke Beltjens presents complex, process-based, ink drawings that raise existential questions.

Beltjens begins with a small piece of paper as a tool. Placing the small paper on a large sheet of paper that will become the finished drawing, she makes a series of short, parallel lines that begin on the ‘tool’ and extend onto the finished drawing. She moves the ‘tool’ and repeats. And repeats. And repeats.

When she is finished, one-half of each mark is visible on the drawing. The other half is gone, but discernable through the unexpected linear formations resulting from the straight edge of the ‘tool.’ Is something not whole, when part of it is elsewhere, invisible? Absence, she posits, does not equate with non-existence.

Beltjens takes the line of inquiry further in certain drawings from which she cuts a small rectangle from the blank paper that will be the finished drawing. The removed piece becomes the ‘tool.’ She proceeds to make her marks, half on the ‘tool’ and half off, then reinserts the ‘tool’ in the place it was removed from the drawing. The half-lines on the reinserted rectangles are disconnected from the other halves on the same page. The entire line is present, but interrupted. She repeats the process again and again, then works the drawings more, with another paper ‘tool’ that was never part of this drawing. Thus the drawing is both whole and incomplete.

When something is not present or visible we call it absent. But in absence there can also be a strong presence. Beltjens’ newest work explores the potential for wholeness.