Jan Voss

The work

Verwandlung (Transformation)
2000
162 x 130 cm
Oil on canvas

Two types of signs cover the surface of the canvas: the first, around fifty small closed geometric areas, most of them irregular polygons painted in different shades of flat colors and without any depth. The second, the straight and curved lines that inhabit their interior, taking random shapes and often colonizing neighboring surfaces.
The contrast between the straight edges of the chromatic polygons and the curves of the lines within them emphasizes the territorial nature of the former and the dynamism of the latter. There is a certain sense of organic space in which the parts relate to each other without any sense of up or down, disorienting those who try to decipher the hidden reasons behind an order that is in reality a random, totally improvised puzzle. A painted collage or assemblage of shapes inspired by the moment, the title Verwandlung, Transformation, is not a key that unlocks the work, but rather adds more questions.

The artist

(Hamburg, Germany, 1936)

Jan Voss arrived in Paris from Hamburg in 1960 after studying fine arts in Munich. His work has been distinguished by a desire for constant change and ongoing evolution. The compositional structure develops without prior planning.
His first solo exhibition was in 1964 in Paris, and he then participated in the exhibition of the same year, Everyday Mythologies, which marked the birth of Narrative Figuration.
While in his early work his signs were identifiable, a kind of pictogram from an intimate and personal alphabet, in the 1980s figuration dissolved and volume disappeared. In the 1990s, he distanced himself from them, moving away from the figurative sphere without fully reaching abstraction.