Melancholy Underworld

"Melancholy Underworld" is a special edition piece with a limited moody blue/purple colour palette. The composition unfolds as a labyrinth of interlocking organic and geometric forms, each defined by emphatic black outlines. At the upper center, a single stylized eye—its iris a cool cerulean ringed in inky black—anchors the viewer’s gaze. Radiating from this focal point are sinuous tendrils, angular forms, and looping curves that weave together like a visual symphony.

It features a cadmium blue heart, kidneys, an open (screaming) mouth, a brain, both a large and a small intestine, a stomach, a pair of lungs, bunny ears, two ear lobes, an eye with eyelashes, a neuron, part of a crustacean and a security camera.

This piece evokes the tension between perception and imagination. The central eye symbolizes focused awareness, while the surrounding forms suggest thoughts, memories, and impulses swirling outwards in every direction. The bold outlines speak to an attempt to impose structure, yet the fluid interplay of color and shape reminds us how the subconscious resists containment.

Viewed as a whole, the work becomes a map of mental activity—a “storm” of ideas and emotions emerge where clarity and chaos can co-exist. It prompts reflection on how we see ourselves versus how our inner life unfurls beyond our control.

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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.