Seet van Hout | Preview
A floor plan with the elegance of blood coral
The signature of Seet van Hout (Nijmegen, 1957) has the elegance of blood coral. Her work consists of paintings, sculptures, and installations, in which the colour red plays a leading role. The sweeping contours are also characteristic. Her creations show many fanning lines and lace-like patterns, which make this oeuvre a tight fabric, full of branches and connections. There is literally a thread running through it. The embroidery machine is this artist’s right hand.
Van Hout sets out traces with her running thread. She unfolds a wondrous floor plan on canvas, paper and in space, with strips of textile that curl over the floor or hang from the ceiling. Flowing lines stretch like footpaths in a garden. They grow into stems of flowers and plants, a girl's face wreathed in ringlets.
At the same time, they mirror our vascular system and the curved areas in the brain, the intestines, and our own inner selves. What goes on in the head and the heart?
Seet van Hout sets our imagination in motion with images and words that complement each other. Shreds, strips, and fragments describe and illustrate the working of memory, including spaces of oblivion. A pile of diaries with an embroidered dust jackets evokes an entire woman’s life. They remain closed, but a cloud of thoughts emerges from them, full of dreams, memories, traumas, and desires piled up between the pages.
Text: Wilma Sütö
