Collection: Jan Davidoff
Jan Davidoff's pictures are distinctive, representational, powerful and actually omnipresent: plants – often in grazing light – occupy space. Sometimes they remain solitary in a portrait, sometimes in groups, sometimes appearing almost lost in their vegetal company. Light playfully reflects off the treetops. Mighty tree stems are throwing long shadows. In some cases the artist utilises stereotypes to depict his sceneries. He isolates shapes, lets surface areas drift apart right to the edge where perception changes. If our sense of vision was not always striving to sensibly complete the perceived anything already deciphered would turn into abstract signs again. The complexity of Jan Davidoff's paintings shows best when leaving the certainty of the painting's subject; turning from viewer to observer. This is when the eye registers the presence or absence of colour as a material like a seismograph. It recognises resistance and faults, perceiving fractures, damages as well as subtle flows up to tender transparency. Without the expectation of anyone to define or not define the space our looks follow the black into vast depths and the white into intense brilliance. In many of his landscapes Jan Davidoff restricts himself to basic colours, concentrating on spots the size of confetti or putting a colour-filter on top of the picture. For it is rather the light than the colour longing for attention. Dramatic, blazing, rich in contrast, quasi appearing as prototype of a memory in black-white negative. Flickering, shimmering. It distracts with sudden absence. At first it dazzles but in the very next moment it softly slides over into magical mist, mellowing any rugged definition with vaporising elusiveness. Through Jan Davidoff's way of guiding the light silhouettes of reality originate. Impartially following him into his imagery has expeditionary traits in deed. Light-footedly, almost indiscernibly, he leads beyond accustomed horizons.
