René Daniels (b. 1950)

In 1985, René Daniëls made two paintings and christened them both Painting on Unknown Languages. If the Eindhoven-based artist - who would suffer a brain aneurysm two years later, though he recently began painting again - could get away with such a title, it's because known languages are blunt instruments for dealing with his loose-limbed, affably implacable enigmas. Here, for example, is Peter Doig game attempt at summarizing has commented on Daniëls' art: 'His paintings are like some dreams.' Michael Raedecker has said: 'A mental painter of reduced and archetypal images.' While Michael Kimmelman reveals: 'There is something going on in the work; you just never know exactly what.'
One can readily assent to all these analyses, and then go back to the paintings for the other 90 percent of what it feels like they're doing (Peter Doig, Michael Raedecker, and Michael Kimmilman quoted in M. Herbert, 'René Daniëls', Frieze Magazine, January-February 2011).