Menno Bauer and the beauty of the perfect movement

Menno Bauer is interested in the movements of dancers. "In my paintings", says Bauer, 'I set everything in motion. I want the figures in the painting to dance. I want to show that everything is alive and infused with tension. In fact, I am also dusting off images that already exist. He is not only inspired by Van Maanen's ballets, but also by famous historic paintings. They too contain scenes into which Bauer breathes new life. His reasoning is simple. In a painting, everything is still, motionless, because it is all painted. Nonetheless, you can instil the suggestion of motion. The challenge is to make that illusion convincing.
It should be said that Menno Baueer does not work in a realistic style. Against a background of broad planes of colour- an agressive red versus a friendly green -, his figures, loosely contoured in black, dance, walk and fall, imprisoned in a world of their own. Here, just as in a filmclip of Johan Cruyff slowly flying past, its utterly unclear just what these people are doing or where they are.
In Menno Bauer's eyes, the figures inhabiting the sometimes renowned paintings that he uses as his starting points are the theatrical performers acting out their roles. The undefined space in wich they find themselves is hence their stage, a place that can be altered into all manner of environments by way of changing the docors. The actors that Bauer employs in his paintings are professionals in the art of overstatement. Cheer or drama are applied in thick layers, out to persuade their audience. Moreover, what these characters are acting out is not real. Bauer finds excitement in making use of this exaggeration, these emphatic, acted-out gestures, in order to approach the illusion of real gesture or movement.
Henk Heijnen art historian/ director artlibrary Gouda