Olphaert den Otter
To speed I responded with slowness. To superficiality with an attempt at profundity. To the fleeting with duration. To the common with the exceptional. And to ugliness with splendor. I want to do what is not done. I want Everything, even when it no longer has meaning.
Olphaert den Otter via Wat kan ik voor u betekenen?, 2010
Olphaert den Otter’s (1955, the Netherlands) work demonstrates a profound interest in history and the cyclical motions within it, as his choice of style and materials, but most of all his subjects show. Transience features in many forms and offers itself, not necessarily as cruelty, but as often eschewed reality, close in kind to progress and thus, to morality. There is beauty, a realist’s romanticism perhaps, in Den Otter’s work, portrayed through a notable regard for light, color and space.
