As the title indicates, for this series of paintings Niko Hendrickx was inspired by Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935). His choice of Malevich shows his unlimited respect for the artist’s oeuvre. Hendrickx also finds himself somehow related to the Russian by the element ‘gradients’ in Malevich’s work, e.g. in ‘The Rye Harvest’ (ca. 1912). It is a technique he himself has applied occasionally in the series ‘Painting in Difference’.
The first three paintings were entitled ’Release the Accelerator’. Malevich loathed machines and factories, and glorified peasant life. In the same way we see Racer Malevich literally free himself from his speeding race machine by releasing his whole body in the middle of a road.
‘Racer Malevich’ continues on foot and finds himself in different settings again and again.
And yet, something was missing in the three paintings, probably because they were too much like the series from 2017. That is why the idea arose of creating the gradients with RGB led lights, rather than with paint. After that, multiple designs were made with the 3D program, which were then exported as pictures and, in turn, transformed into reliefs.
These reliefs were put up behind a black ‘Malevich square’, with programmable RGB led strips on the back. For each separate relief a number of colour combinations was selected, colours that slowly blend. The led colours also glide underneath the ‘floating square’: they emphasize the contours and colour the wall.
See the pictures of the project installation in the studio on this page. In a projected cross form, also a reference to a Malevich painting, one sees all the reliefs in a vertical line, with the designs as colour prints. Where the black square is, the relief has been removed and it is put in the horizontal line of the cross, behind a black RGB light.
This project was accomplished with the help of teachers and students of PROVIL in Lommel.
