NederlandsFirst and foremost, Alexx Meidam is a painter. During his training at the Willem De Kooning Academy (1982-1987), he was introduced to the radically simplified paintings by American artist Robert Ryman and the German artists Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz among others.
Meidam constructs his works layer by layer with paint in primary colors and other materials (such as charcoal). From the nineties onwards the square became a central point in his work more often, because he considers it as “a shape that I never encounter in nature (except for a square fish in the Red Sea, that I saw while I was hiking through Egypt…). The square is a shape that actually has no content, and I’m looking for content. I believe that a square is more square when it’s painted on a rectangle than it is by itself” (quoted from A. Leeuw Marcar, R. Welagen and P. Molendijk, ‘Alexx Meidam. Mixed Squares’, Heerjansdam 2014).
More recently Meidam started to paint two canvases at the same time. Subsequently, he cuts the canvases in strips and weaves them back together in order to create a new work of art: and a total unexpected partern of squares is revealed. These layered works are called ‘Mixed Squares’ by Meidam.