Whitehot Magazine

Kees Goudzwaard: Illusion as Inquiry at Nunu Fine Art

 

By RIAD MIAH July 16, 2025

The enduring appeal of trompe l’oeil—a painterly technique designed to “deceive the eye” into perceiving three-dimensional space on a flat surface—has occupied a significant place in Western art history, from antiquity through the Dutch Golden Age. In the work of Kees Goudzwaard, a contemporary Dutch painter now based in Antwerp, Belgium, this visual sleight of hand is revived with a cool, conceptual precision. His first solo exhibition in New York, currently on view at Nunu Fine Art through August 23, offers a quiet yet incisive meditation on illusion, perception, and material restraint.

In a city flooded with the need to consume—whether images, exhibitions, or fleeting impressions—Goudzwaard’s paintings pose something rare: time. These works refuse to be quickly understood. What initially seems minimal or even austere slowly unveils deep complexity, both visually and philosophically. It is this resistance to immediacy that gives the exhibition its quiet strength.

Looking Up, 2023, oil on canvas, 70 7/8 x 59 in

Each canvas presents a meticulously arranged composition of imagery that consists subtle color fields, activated by forms that resemble strips of tape layered over translucent or opaque paper. These “tape” elements overlap, cross, and occasionally seem to float, casting illusory shadows that transform the two-dimensional plane into something spatial and luminous. That all of this is executed in oil paint is both impressive and ultimately secondary; Goudzwaard’s technical mastery never seeks self-congratulation. Rather, it serves a deeper investigation—one that destabilizes our assumptions about materiality, image, and what it truly means to see a painting. The artist’s intention is echoed in his titles. Works such as Rearranging Green, Passing Through, and the eponymous Light Matter suggest both process and metaphysics—gestures toward the mutability of perception, and the poetic potential embedded in the mundane.

While Goudzwaard’s use of trompe l’oeil gestures toward art historical precedent, it diverges in tone and intention. Absent is the overt theatricality or moral symbolism of 17th-century vanitas painting. The scale alone—ranging from medium to large—signals a departure from the intimate dimensions of his artistic forebears. Yet the spirit of inquiry remains. Before the exhibition’s opening, in a conversation with the artist, Goudzwaard described his process as one of deliberate construction. Rather than inventing compositions from imagination, he physically assembles arrangements in real space: strips of tape adhered to vellum or tracing paper, set against neutral backgrounds, and precisely lit. These “still life” are then transposed to canvas, where each wrinkle, shadow, and tonal shift is rendered by hand.

Meadow, 2024, oil on canvas, 47 1/4x 39 3/8

Take, for instance, Scale and Distance, which likely began with the arrangement of painter’s tape atop a dark surface. Once translated into oil on canvas, this simple gesture yields a complex visual field—one that feels at once mechanical and celestial. What begins as an arrangement of discarded studio materials is transformed into an ethereal, spatially ambiguous terrain. Flatness gives way to suggestion; the ordinary becomes strangely cosmic.In this way, Goudzwaard’s work echoes the conceptual sharpness of early modern still-life painters like Edward Collier, who reimagined the memento mori tradition with objects relevant to his own time—books, letters, and scientific instruments—avoiding the skulls and crucifixes common to his predecessors. Like Collier, Goudzwaard utilizes the visual language of today, elevating studio castaways to the status of subjects. However, unlike Collier’s moral allegories, Goudzwaard’s works are not instructive. They do not glorify or mourn the mundane; instead, they diminish the distinctions between medium and message, subject and surface. The result is both intellectually stimulating and sensually engaging.

Scale and Distance, 2023, oil on canvas, 49 1/4 x 39 3/8 in

There is no romantic flourish here. The illusion is precise—nearly mechanical—yet imbued with the subtle warmth of sustained attention. In place of expressive gesture, we find deliberation. In place of narrative, we encounter presence. While the Dutch masters aimed to depict the transience of earthly pleasures, Goudzwaard turns his gaze toward the temporality of perception itself. Color in these works also deserves close scrutiny. Though often monochromatic, Goudzwaard introduces bursts of saturated hue in the form of painted “tape,” which simultaneously reads as object and illusion. These moments of color operate like residues—fragments of decision, or markers of thought. They punctuate the calm of the surrounding field, drawing our attention to the surface, then receding into the suggestion of depth. One is never entirely certain where the painting ends and the image begins.

Despite their appearance, these works are not the result of digital manipulation or chance. They are the product of slow, deliberate labor. Goudzwaard arranges his materials, photographs or scans the setup, and then paints the image over a period of weeks or even months. Every choice is intentional; nothing is left to accident. And yet, paradoxically, the work never feels inert. Instead, it radiates a quiet devotion—the intimacy of care, and of a belief that painting remains relevant even (or especially) in an age of visual excess.

Rearranging Green, 2023, oil on canvas, 55 1/8 x 43 1/4 in

At a time when much of contemporary painting leans toward gestural expressiveness or digital intervention, Goudzwaard charts a more meditative path. His paintings remind us that the act of looking—when slowed down—is itself a form of inquiry. What happens when we mistake paint for tape? When we discover that the cast shadow isn’t real? What does this reveal about our hunger for authenticity in a culture dominated by simulation?In this light, Goudzwaard’s paintings take on a quiet urgency. They do not shout or clamor for attention. They propose. They suggest. And in doing so, they invite us to consider not only what we are seeing, but how we are seeing—and why.

The exhibition at Nunu Fine Art presents no manifesto, nor does it adopt an aggressive curatorial stance. But for those willing to pause, to inhabit the subtle space between image and object, it offers a rare reward. In a city defined by speed, these paintings insist on slowness. And in that slowness, they open up an expansive terrain of thought, perception, and aesthetic clarity.

 

 

Riad Miah

Riad Miah was born in Trinidad and lives and works in New York City. His work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, Sperone Westwater, White Box Gallery, Deluxe Projects, Rooster Contemporary Art, Simon Gallery, and Lesley Heller Workshop. He has received fellowships nationally and internationally. His works are included in private, university, and corporate collections. He contributes to Two Coats of Paint, the Brooklyn Rail, and Art Savvvy.

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