Ruud Starke

My work explores the existential landscape: the earth as a silent witness to time, transformation and human existence. I am interested in the deeper layers of the earth as a living archive: a place where traces of evolution, decay, violence, ritual and renewal accumulate. Soil is not merely a physical ground beneath our feet, but a carrier of memory. She preserves what has disappeared and been transformed as well as what is yet to emerge. The landscapes I create are not representations of specific existing places. They are imaginary territories- fragments of an unknown geography in which nature and human presence are inextricably connected. A damaged surface, an imprint, a contour or an almost unrecognisable organic form may refer to something that once existed or something that is still in a process of becoming. I don't see evolution not as a straight linear progression, but as a cyclical and unpredictable process of transformation and adaptation. Within this process creation and destruction, life and death, order and disorder exist simultaneously. The landscape, the soil, becomes both witness and participant in this continuous movement. The human presence remains deliberately incomplete. Rather than depicting the figure, I work with traces, fragments, impressions of absences. This creates an atmosphere in which silence carries tension and the familiar becomes slightly estranged. The feminine 0ccupies a particular significance within my work. It represents a force of continuity, transformation and new life, and often exists in tension with the masculine. The titles of my work refer to fictional archaeological sites and their registration or documentation, as if each painting were a fragment originating from an unknown place, time or civilisation. I work with materials such as oil paint, oil stick, watercolour paint, mould and plant extracts, silicon carbide, aluminium, wood, beeswax and sea salt. These materials carry their own processes of erosion, absorption, purification, decay and preservation. They become part of the language of the work, allowing the material itself to speak about time, vulnerability, transformation and existence.