Is it not the ultimate guilty pleasure, wanting to know how the neighbour lives, what they own and what they are doing right now? TV reality shows have been dedicated to this. We are fascinated by what another has or does; we would love to own what they have, do what they do. Or the opposite: sometimes it is just wonderful to abhor the way someone shapes their life.

The paintings of Adzer van der Molen are exactly that: places that others have created and own and make one curious. Van der Molen isolates these kinds of location from film and television images or photographs, and subsequently processes them. These places are not necessarily beautiful. They are abandoned freeways and buildings that remind one of anonymous architecture to be found in American suburbs or in nondescript provincial towns. No lush old villas or new luxury apartments, but simple and sometimes almost ugly buildings, without any decoration or personal additions. They are structures not made to be recorded, but are shown and even made into the focus of the paintings.

The intertwining of the absence of aesthetics with perfection is specific to the works of Adzer van der Molen. The lack of beauty was rarely this perfect. Hedges are nicely trimmed and in the neatly mown grass no weeds can be found. The depicted roads are free from ditches and wear and tear. All human tracks seem to be erased as well. There are no toys lying around on the lawn, no garbage by the side of the road, no trashcans, not even mailboxes.

It is that tension between this recognition on the one hand and this alienation on the other that is fascinating. You are looking at something really existing which at the same time you cannot quite place. It is up to you as a viewer to fill in the scene, to imagine what could happen behind these façades and where the roads might lead you to. Apparently, the artist has determined the outlines where the viewer then takes care to fill them in. The outer world is delineated, the inner world has yet to be completed.

Another contrast in the work of van der Molen is the one between resignation and restlessness. The depicted scenes are serene, without any action. The houses and roads we see seem to find themselves suspended in time. Crises and trouble seem to pass by here without causing any ripples. Somewhere in the world there exists a migration crisis, right extremist politics is advancing and the impact of climate change is becoming visible, but in this painted context none of this is apparent.

At the same time, there is also an impatience in the works. As a viewer, you find yourself at a distance and slightly on the side, as if you are walking or driving towards the buildings, or have just passed them by and briefly glance back. The roads and stairs are also leading you someplace. Or are they leading you from somewhere? What is awaiting you on the other side or at the end of the road: a curious site or a homecoming?

With titles that refer to scripture and lyrics van der Molen points to the quest for ultimate contemplation, redemption and happiness. It remains a question, of course, whether all of this is already present where you are right now, or whether you have a way to go before you will reach this, or if it will never come within reach and remain a quest forever. Evidently, the answer to this will be different from one person to another.

This kind of existential concerns blends perfectly with the grey tones in which the works are set up, from light grey, to purplish, green and yellowish grey. Here grey is not simply a combination of white and black, but also results from the mixing of complementary colors. Under the cool surface a warmth, from which the radiation is virtually erased, is in a sense hiding.

Gerhard Richter, the painter who made grey tones his trademark, said that for him grey was ideal because it is ‘not a mood, not a symbol for one thing or the other’. There are no fixed emotions or other meanings that cling to it. In the case of a polychrome work, it makes quite a difference whether an image is depicted, for instance, in cool blue tones or in an expressive flaming red. Grey is more objective and holds open possibilities. Moreover, it enhances perception. Without the immediate distraction of color things come to stand out that otherwise might have gone unnoticed, like the contrast between light and shadow, the tension between the hard lines of construction, infrastructure, and the capricious shapes of omnipresent nature and the rhythmic repetition of fences, posts and tree trunks. Rarely has life this pedestrian been as intriguing.

Mare van Koningsveld