Nederlands

As a child Erik Cox already had a love of old, discarded things. By the time he reached high school, he was foraging around rummage sales and household refuse dumps in the hope of finding items that he could once again turn into useful objects. He also thought up a method by which he could deepen the perspective of letters as he placed them in a stacked composition on a page. Cox’s fascination for art forms and letters led him, finally, to the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague. He got his degree in 1989, finishing his study by designing a house style for a furniture company.
While earning his living as a graphic designer, Cox began to spend more and more time in his personal studio, pulled by a freedom the graphic world doesn’t offer, but which he found in his painting and in the reworking of old materials into objects that revealed their innate beauty. The element of surprise plays a crucial role in Cox’s paintings. As you look at them you feel the painter interacting intensely with his materials as they “speak” to him during the creative process, the final result never completely predetermined. These paintings* show the discipline and intuition of a master craftsman able to use the unexpected. The same goes for Cox’s furniture. Sturdy, old shipping crates were given a new life as wardrobes or cupboards. Found materials are incorporated into folding screens in which the grace and beauty of these old materials become visible. The feeling of the secret life of things revealed.
Erik Cox prefers creating, respecting and answering the circumstances under which something develops and comes into being rather than determining the process and all its details beforehand. “The universe unfolding.”

*
Erik Cox usually signs and dates his work on the rear. The front displays only his monogram, often inconspicuously embossed in the paper.

In Private Collections:

Versteeg Wigman Sprey Lawyers, Amsterdam
Catharsis & Two Black Stripes in a Restless Landscape

Healthy People, The Hague
Grace

Printers Lenoirschuring, Amstelveen
Unknown Life #4 (Made in France)