Interlude / Duality Studies, chapter 8 from The Works

Between the Cross series and the labyrinths,t here was a quieter period of transition.

No clear series emerged,only fragments: black-and-white studies,skeletal figures, reduced forms, lines searching for direction.

Looking back now, I recognize these works as threshold paintings.

The explicit religious imagery slowly disappeared, but the underlying structure remained.

The cross dissolved into polarity: black and white,inside and outside,presence and absence, movement and stillness. The human figure became increasingly fragmented,sometimes almost disappearing altogether.

What remained was tension, direction, rhythm, space.

The paintings no longer tried to explain anything. They became more silent. More stripped down.

Around this time I wrote repeatedly in my notebooks:

VERTRAAG,CONCENTREER EN ZOEK DE BETEKENIS. Slow down, concentrate and search for meaning.

Without fully realizing it, the work was already moving toward the labyrinth.

Not as a symbol,but as a structure of consciousness.

A search for orientation.

A search for a center hidden within movement itself.

Many of the works from this period feel suspended between construction and disappearance. As if something is being dismantled, while at the same time another language is slowly emerging.

Perhaps every essential transformation begins this way: not through certainty, but through reduction.

Through silence. Through not knowing.

“Live the questions now.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen.” Franz Kafka

Sitting quietly,doing nothing,

spring comes,and the grass grows by itself.

Zen poem

Before enlightenment: chop wood,carry water.

After enlightenment:chop wood,carry water.

Zen proverb