Works by Gijs van Lith playfully distort our expectations and fundamental understanding of what a painting can or should be. He takes the ideas offered by
action painting, abstract expressionism and tachism to their utmost conclusion and searches for a painting that consists of nothing more than gestures and raw
material. This connects him to a line of artists who embrace an essential emptiness of meaning in their work without a sense of post-modern irony. His works are carefully conceived stackings of manical-mechanical applications of paint on a surface. Their starting point is often some kind of grid-like system, ranging from chicken-wire to the way a digital image is structured. But above all his works burst at the seams from the sheer joy of painting they seem to convey.