Submerged Intentions

In the artwork "Submerged Intentions", synthetic inanimate objects, marine fauna, and pharmacological remnants drift within a suspended dreamspace—a moody subaquatic world layered with artifacts of surveillance and memory.

A golden intestinal tract snakes across the upper margin, tethering disparate realities: a floating teapot, security camera, and slotted spatula—all rendered in flat watercolor, outlined with stark black outlines that suggest containment and control.

Beneath these icons, yellow eyeglasses sit vacant in the currents, echoing themes of vision and disembodied presence. Amidst scattered red-and-blue pills, a singularly large green eye nested within a stalked amoeboid creature watches from the lower left-hand side quadrant.

Clusters of red tentacles curl upward with quiet tension. Stylized shrimp-like crustaceans and small aqua blue fish swim in unison. To the centre far right, a cluster of golden-orange flying geta footwear are orbiting each other.

The artwork collapses inside-out associations: surveillance turns introspective, medication becomes mnemonic, and domesticity feels alien.

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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.