By Marta Puig, Editor/Curator Contemporary Art Magazine. (partial view)

Van Wingerden, born in the Netherlands and trained at the Academy for Art and Design in 's-Hertogenbosch (1969-1974), emerged in the twilight of modernism and the rise of postmodern doubt. In 1977 he received the prestigious Royal Subsidy and initially embraced the technical precision of photorealism. But as he later noted, the laborious truthfulness of the medium regarding surface details felt insufficient for his profound artistic exploration. The dominance of the photo, the mechanical reproduction that Walter Benjamin called 'the withering of the aura,' forced Van Wingerden to question what art could still retain in a world of untenable reproduction. His journey from realism to conceptualism was therefore not a stylistic mutation, but a philosophical departure. Over the decades, Van Wingerden's oeuvre articulates a coherent philosophical arc, from representation to revelation, from image to idea. His work exists at the intersection of Dan Flavin's phenomenological power, Joseph Beuys' moral consciousness, and Duchamp's semiotic play, yet remains unmistakably his own. Where Flavin attempts to dematerialize sculpture through light, Van Wingerden rematerializes ethics through illumination. His neon, in contrast to Flavin's industrial purity, carries the residue of history, the spirit of factories, the memory of labor, the melancholy of the decline of civilization. By reclaiming these discarded elements, he practices what men might call an archaeology of the contemporary, where each work is a place where the material past confronts the ideological present. Van Wingerden's commitment to conceptual precision is matched by his sensitivity to meaning. His installations are not didactic; they invite contemplation. They operate in what Merleau-Ponty described as 'the clearly invisible,' the space where meaning coincides with consciousness. The viewer does not merely look at the work but is also influenced by its logic. The light that illuminates also reveals. You cannot stand for human rights or the Z-word without feeling the ethical unease of spectatorship. To understand Van Wingerden's place in the contemporary art scene, one must look beyond his stylistic background and focus on philosophical resonance. In an art world dominated by spectacle and by the market's sustainable repetition,
his practice emphasizes the primacy of thought. He belongs to a generation of artists for
whom art is an epistemological act, a means to knowledge. His works challenge
the passivity of looking and compel the viewer to consider the image instead
of consuming it. In doing so, he restores the critical function of art in a
culture that has largely abandoned critique.
Moreover, Van Wingerden's work embodies a form of ethical ecology, recycling
discarded materials into new systems of meaning. The neon salvaged from
demolished factories becomes a metaphor for redemption, the possibility that
even amidst the ruins of progress, light endures. His art thus speaks to our
collective crisis of meaning in the Anthropocene. It reminds us that
illumination, both literally and figuratively, must be earned, not assumed.
Where the early avant-gardes sought to blur the boundaries between art and life,
Van Wingerden's project can be seen as a reversal: he restores the autonomy of art
precisely to approach life critically. His works do not imitate the
world; they diagnose it. Through a language of radiant restraint, he exposes the
hypocrisy of modern civilization, the illusion of freedom, the commodification
of truth, and the numbing of constant visibility. Yet his works, despite all
critique, are not cynical. They carry a quiet faith in
consciousness, a belief that art can still awaken consciousness. Today, as he
continues to produce from his studio in the Netherlands, exhibiting throughout
Europe and gaining recognition from museums and private collections,
Van Wingerden is regarded as one of the rare artists who combines technological
refinement with metaphysical depth. His receipt of the Premier Artist Prize
(2025) and the Artist Index Prize (2025) merely confirm what his oeuvre has long
demonstrated: that meaning, when pursued with integrity, remains relevant.
In this lies his enduring significance. Hans van Wingerden is not only an artist
of form but also of meaning, an alchemist of illumination who
transforms industrial waste into metaphysical reflection. In an era of visual abundance,
he reminds us that true light does not come from what we see, but from what we
can ultimately understand.

 

By Marta Puig, Editor Curator Contemporary Art Magazine. (partial view)

For more about my other visual work, you can visit the website: www.hansvanwingerden.nl