About the work

The work of Jack Segbars is best described as a tenacious clinging to the general problems of visual art, using painting as the vehicle with which to research these problems.
Notwithstanding the ever expanding fields of research and the extendinding spectrum of subjects and media within the arts, painting here is maintained as the platform on which these changing aspects of visual research are investigated. The work is best placed as a type of Radical or Fundamental Painting.

The working method is characterised by the way that the painting is seen as an object by which paint is used in a process-oriented and methodical way.
The surface of the painting, the final visible result, is the consequence of formal excecuted actions or decisions. The sequence of steps is usually imitable, traceable and transparent. This transparency is part of the artistic message: the artist is not the interpreter of 'higher and hidden insights' (no mystery or higher truth is suggested that is known exclusively by the artist, the artist is not the sjaman).

The manual and craftsmanly aspect of painting is maintained. The confrontation of the artist with the canvas is maintained. This method mostly produces seductive and tactile images despite their conceptual origine. This aesthetic, that arises by the accurate, craftmanly technique, seems to be in contrast with the rigorous methodology that has led to these images.

Another characterisation is the inwards aimed dialogue with painting itself. The painting with its formal building stones, like the material, the wall and exhibition-context, is accepted as an element on the stage on which the art of painting with its traditions can be placed. In that sense the paintings build on the results from Minimal Art, in that the reduced formality of art is the starting point for further reconnaissance. Like shining with a torch in a space that is already known and mapped, and where also the formal aspects and workings of both the torch and mappable space are known. This method of painting painting builds on this, and introduces aspects like tradition, the passing of time, history and the innovative character of art.

Recent works
Recently, the works of Jack Segbars are characterised by a self generating mechanism, in which chance takes the form of arbitrariness.
Motives, spectrum of colours and themes are chosen on the basis of earlier works.
For example:
-leftover colours from one or more previous works are put together to produce the basic colour for a next painting,
-a motive of a painting is isolated and enlarged, miniaturised, or changed on some other formal basis,
-a painting is enlarged or reduced to a different scale, by which often a deviation is used in the colour spectrum or in size.

To produce strict boundaries, a technique of taping is used. Because of this, portions of the painting are not visible during its realisation. These parts are finished 'blindly,' without being able to survey the entire composition. This blindness / arbitrariness comes back in the choice of colours: sometimes a palette is chosen by what is available at the time in the studio or by mixing colours from previous works.
This arbitrariness is also examined by means of a dripping technique, where the paint drips (usually controlled), dictated by gravity.

The cross-references in theme and colour also return in the titles. This way, an evolution with its own starting point is simulated, this starting point is chosen arbitrarily and at random. A self generating body of work arises that requires no interference from outside, is formed blindly and knows no other reason for being than just being. Because it only refers to itself, the obsessive wish for innovation within the arts and the dogma of originality are isolated and questioned.

All techniques used by Segbars have in common that they simulate chance but still retain, and implicitly show, the maker’s subjectivity.
What is left is an ambivalent attitude towards the possibility of reaching objectivity: the 'I' marks the parameters within which chance gets to do its thing. The maker remains the final responsible - not an abstract system outside of him.
Absolute chance does not exist, nor control over it. The maker, in his search for an 'objective truth,' has to cope with his limited motives and decisions.
Thus, the romantic promise will never be fulfilled.