Cognitive Abilities

In "Cognitive Abilities", van den hooven orchestrates a fractured anatomy of perception—where facial features are exaggerated, duplicated, and displaced across a grid-like psychological terrain. Two oversized ears flank the composition like antennae for emotional static, while asymmetrical eyes—one blue, one green—suggest a split in visual or ideological alignment. The dual red, lattice-like mouths evoke both speech and containment, as if expression itself is caught between impulse and restraint.

Rendered in bold black outlines and filled with chromatic tension—reds, pinks, blues, and greens—the work channels the aesthetic lineage of cubism and abstract expressionism, yet resists resolution. The overlapping forms and distorted proportions mirror the internal conflict implied by the title: a mind negotiating contradictory truths, identities, or desires.

This piece invites viewers to confront the discomfort of multiplicity—where listening, seeing, and speaking are no longer unified acts, but fragmented gestures in search of coherence. Here, van den hooven’s surrealist impulse is tempered by a psychological precision, making Cognitive Abilities both visually arresting and conceptually unsettling.

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van den hooven is an emerging Australian abstract cubist artist whose style is instantly recognisable for its quintessential features: bold lines, consistent colour palette and his symbolic logo-like depiction of facial features, bodily organs and other familiar objects.

His compositions are intentionally cluttered and contradictory, reflecting the chaos of modern life through a unique visual language that fuses the internal with the external, the animate with the inanimate, the natural with the technological.

Born into a lineage steeped in creativity, van den hooven’s artistic roots trace back to his grandfather Abraham Leendert van den Hooven, a Dutch sailor-turned-self-taught artist who settled in Australia in the late 1950s. His mother, Margarita Rosa, also pursued fine art, nurturing a household where creativity could flourish.

Coming from a science research background, van den hooven’s own journey into art was reignited after completing diplomas in graphic design (2016) and illustration (2018).

His work often explores themes of consumption, identity, internal conflict using familiar and quintessential objects—facial features, organs, androids, tentacles, surveillance cameras, crustaceans, fish, and more—to challenge viewers’ perceptions of necessity versus excess.

Looking forward, van den hooven is holding his inaugural solo art exhibition at the Clyde Gallery, Bay Pavilions Art+Aquatic centre, Batemans Bay, in August 2025.