There is no possibility of communication with the figures depicted in the paintings of Johan van Dijke. They are physically and materially present, but are at the same time psychologically detached: deep in thought, sleeping, on the phone or watching TV.
This dualism (body-mind, life-matter) is ever-present in his work. For him, man is a being who has turned in on himself. Every image is a mirror, bound up in ones own self-perception.
Is all that lies beyond the reaches of human perception an infinite vacuous blackness?
What do you discover if you allow yourself to delve deeper into the human mind?
And what do you see when your eyes become accustomed to this darkness?
His paintings are the visual results of him thrashing out these questions from the starting point of his own documentation.
His work has an indefinable feel: the familiar is rendered unfamiliar. A blind wall recalls a distinct image; seemingly distinct images turn out to be blind walls. What looks close by is actually far away. All material lives and is able to take on the guise of something threatening or even comforting.
