The Window | Jan Davidoff

Jan Davidoff's pictures are unmistakable, objective, powerful and actually omnipresent: plants - often in raking light - occupy the space. Sometimes they stand alone in the picture, sometimes in groups, sometimes they seem almost lost in their plant company. The light is playfully reflected in the treetops. Mighty tree trunks cast long shadows. In some cases the artist uses stereotypes to depict his landscapes. He isolates shapes, lets surfaces drift apart, right up to the edge where perception changes. If our sense of sight did not always strive to meaningfully complete what we perceive, everything that has already been deciphered would become abstract signs again. The complexity of Jan Davidoff's paintings is best revealed when you leave the certainty of the subject of the picture and become an observer instead of a viewer. Then the eye registers the presence or absence of color as a material like a seismograph. It recognizes resistance and distortions, perceives breaks, damage and subtle flows right up to delicate transparency.

Without the expectation that someone will define or not define the space, our gaze follows the black into vast depths and the white into intense brilliance. In many of his landscapes, Jan Davidoff restricts himself to primary colors, concentrates on confetti-sized spots or places a color filter over the picture. Because it is the light rather than the color that demands attention. Dramatic, flaming, rich in contrast, almost like a prototype of a memory in black and white negative. Flickering, shimmering. It distracts with its sudden absence. At first it blinds, only to gently fade into a magical mist the next moment, which softens every harsh sharpness with evaporating fleetingness. Jan Davidoff's way of directing the light creates silhouettes of reality. Following him unbiased into his world of images has almost expeditionary characteristics. Light-footed, almost imperceptible, he leads us beyond familiar horizons.

Other works by Jan Davidoff