We might well have expected an inventory of styles and effects from Chris van der Craats. Instead, we find paintings with a consistency of method which nevertheless focus on that particular area of cultural production: the language of painting.
In these images we find stylised emblems from art history: abstractions of portraiture, figuration and formalism. Yet the paring down of imagery in this work is not pursued towards a minimalist aesthetic: this is not an art of geometry, but a painterly investigation into classification and contingency. The result is work which is neither abstract nor figurative: having no clearly-defined aesthetic, the difficulty of dialogue between art and its audience is made evident.
This rather uncomfortable position of an art which is at once quirky and highly stylised also results from a distrust of taxonomy and artistic purity. These 'painting' paintings also suggest a satirical view of the making and observation of art: a parody of artistic creation which complements his interest in the recognition of content (which has become apparent in his work over the last few years).
Here we may find suggestions (on the level of content) of Duchamp, Munch, Picasso and others. Chris van der Craats' (by now familiar) fascination with the indexical mode of representation suggests that the cool (reclining figure), the dynamic ('Nude Descending a Staircase’) and the expressionistic (screaming head) modes all become equivalent in his scheme as stylistic contrivances.