KUNSTHUIS Gallery, at Dutch House, Mill Green Farm, Crayke, is combining the work of Dutch abstract painter René Korten and British sculptor Richard Mackness in its summer show.

Korten lives and works in the Netherlands, using the impact humans have on the environment for inspiration, and his painting process "alternates precise

decisions with intuitive operations and only partial controllable actions".

In one phase, the fluid paint finds its own way; in the subsequent phase, Korten regains control and experiments extensively with the placement of a line or the undulations of a contour.

After studying at the Moller Institute in Tilburg and the Academy for Art Education, he now teaches art at Tilburg, as well as exhibiting at galleries and museums in the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

"I believe that the world is an amalgam of chaos and horror, and at the same time of beauty and ingenuity, as a result of human nature," says Korten. "Cultural and natural processes become virtually indistinguishable from each other, the formal and organic."

Korten's images present a parallel universe, rubbing against reality. "The painting is its own domain as well as a portrayal of the [complexity of the] world in which it exists," he says. "There is no distinction between the abstract and the figurative."

Sculptor Richard Mackness has exhibited for more than 40 years since taking a foundation course at York School of Art. He graduated from Bristol Polytechnic with a Fine Art degree, since when he has pursued his own creativity, exhibiting nationally and internationally in New York, Philadelphia and Germany, while also tutoring others.

As a child, Mackness was fascinated by his home city, whether clay from the banks of the River Ouse or the statues, figures and grotesques that adorn many of the buildings, fuelling his imagination with thoughts of Roman soldiers, animals and monsters.

"I believe the imprint of touch and the human actions recorded in an object are important," he says, defining his work as a sculptor. "Objects we encounter in the world are experienced through our physical being. We estimate, measure and reveal the world to ourselves as a reflection of the body we possess."

The Witte Kubus Show III: Summer Exhibition, featuring René Korten and Richard Mackness, runs until September 2.

Charles Hutchinson