5 Pieces of Cotton Wool 1962

Henk Peeters made ‘5 Pieces of Cotton Wool’ with… well, five pieces of cotton wool! There’s something so blunt about it, and yet, so delicate. I’m really drawn to the texture, the way the cotton wool is built up, this sense of layering and accumulation. There’s a tension here between the soft, fluffy, ephemeral quality of the cotton wool and the hard, flat surface it’s stuck to. It reminds me that artmaking is, at its heart, a process of accumulation. One mark, one gesture, one layer at a time. Look how the cotton fibers at the edges break away from the perfect bar, giving it a messy and human feel. Peeters was interested in the “zero” movement, he was trying to strip art down to its bare essentials, it’s not surprising that I think of Robert Ryman looking at this work. Both seem committed to exploring the simple beauty of materials. Ultimately, this piece suggests that art can be found in the most unexpected places. It encourages us to look at the world with fresh eyes and to appreciate the beauty of the everyday.