The images that are visible and that are being generated not
only provide a sense of contact and exchange between in and
out, but also the lack thereof. Where a painting displays a
virtuoso precision in execution, the notion of imperfection and
absence also form part of its forcefull impact. The motif of the
torso returns regularly in these works, expressing the
wholesomeness that belongs to limitation. The arm-less figure
appears as a missing, while establishing the only possible
contact with its surroundings: a mutual acceptance of
something lacking. In the paintings, sharpness and
tenderness are joined in representing the human
shortcomings, or the human condition.

To encounter one’s own possibilities and shortcomings.
The work invites one to be swept away by what one sees,
allowing oneself to change by means of looking. Being
touched by the power of Petrie Klinckhamer’s imagery.

Joep Schiphorst

From: Locked In, Locked out. (1997).
Exposition Institute Sint Marie in Eindhoven

When I let myself become completely aware of Petrie
Klinckhamer’s works, I cannot but think of the eternal moment
in which eternity and time lay motionless in eachother’s arms.
Silence everywhere, a silence that is about to burst.
The drawing, the concept, the eterneal “skeleton”
(in Klinckhamers’ words) embraces the flesh and admits to its
color.

What does the work of Petrie Klinckhamers remind one of?
Klinckhamers forces the first speechless facts of cosmogony
and the creation of mankind in an almost too articulate form.
On purpose. The first word still needs to be uttered, silence
has the appearance of the Gregorian “without words.” I think
only of the non-personal medieval, scholastic representation
of the supernatural, the art of definition, which characterize
the undefinable of Klinckhamers, the world on the border of chaos
and chronos.

Klinckhamers gives sharp contours to the shape that not yet
exists. He defines by means of negative theology. I could not
place Petrie other than in the company of Orphic artists,
a supernatural expressionism with a supernatural face.
Something superhuman that attracts us like the face of an
angel, of Klee’s “angelus novus,
” the angel who is not there yet but almost, the approaching
angel, “in statu nascendi.”

Maarten Beks

From: Gregorian Without Words. (1996).
Exposition Gallery Wolfs in Maastricht

Petrie Klinckhamers paints figures that seem to be great
symbols that have been established since long before
memory. The shapes that create his images, do not have the
intention to research the direct surface in a modernist way.
They are morphemes, meaning-carrying forms.

And also what this meaning is concerned,
Petrie Klinckhamers can almost be characterized as archaic.
It is fundamental painting in so far as that it addresses the
truth of our lives. It is hard to ignore that Petrie Klinckhamers
is concerned with our destiny. The images speak of direction
and wholesomeness, of beginning and meaning, they are
related to primordial images, runes, archaic letters, growing,
flying and taking roots, the signals that were understood by
visionaries.

Fact is that Petrie Klinckhamers himself avoids all
commotion. His work presents serious matter with ease and
he steers clear of the heavy vocabulary that seems inevitable
when discussing his work.

That is the poetic power of art: it is serious,
but by means of play.

Lambert Tegenbosch
Exposition Gallery Wolfs in Maastricht

From: Consistent symbols, tunefull and still. (1990).