Henri Jacobs, Han Schuil Scratching Beyond the Surface drawings, works on paper, paintings 12 October – 16 November 2025

Over the past years Henri Jacobs (1957) has been fascinated by the surface of the drawing. Besides depicting folds and furrows in the image, he also physically manipulates the paper itself. He cuts two drawings into strips and then interweaves them into a single surface again, making the front and back of the sheet equally important.

Han Schuil (1958) also manipulates the surface of his work, painting and spraying with high precision clusters of stars or supernovae, the bottom of a petri dish, or a Manga eye onto aluminium. Once finished, he dents the painting, giving the initially austere and autonomous image a soft and vulnerable quality.

When Henri Jacobs exchanged his new publication New Surface Research with Han Schuil’s catalog Blast Heat this spring, Jacobs came up with the idea of ​​creating an exhibition together because their work is so different yet also shares quite a few similarities.

Henri Jacobs writes about this to Han Schuil : “One boldly folds the aluminum like a garment, the other cuts the paper into strips and weaves them together again to utilize the recto-verso properties of the two-dimensional surface. For one, the aluminum is almost a reference to a high-tech screen with floating rectangular text bars but without text, speechless text bars.” And: “You paint light blue or orange shards as if a sculpture has fallen and shattered. I create shards by interweaving geometric patterns, creating a fragmented image through chance. We’re both fascinated by the phenomenon of iconoclasm; anyone who is even remotely a painter should be an iconoclast…”

Where Henri Jacobs explores the surface of the drawing Han Schuil attempts to capture the absolute, to penetrate the mystery of life and death. In the gallery exhibition, Henri Jacobs’s interwoven drawings are presented in partitions perpendicular to the wall that contain a window displaying his pleated drawing making both sides visible. Between the partitions the paintings by Han Schuil are presented together with further drawings by Henry Jacobs. Besides this an elongated leporello drawing of a mountain range by Henri Jacobs is shown and as a pendant a long horizontal painting on shaped aluminium by Han Schuil.