Catalogue Into the Labyrinth

The portraits and landscapes of Otto Egberts show not the beauty, but the dark or even macabre side of man. They are often distorted by the diseased people placed centrally in his works. The background is almost entirely abstract, reinforcing the people's isolation. Even the faces themselves are sometimes depicted as fragmented or hidden; they rarely look at the viewer,which makes the works very introverted and melancholic. This effect is underlined by the rusty colour palette and the intensity with which the charcoal and/or pastels are applied to the paper.

In an earlier period, Otto Egberts' works were largely figurative. However, his recent work is increasingly abstract. His landscapes and seascapes in particular are sometimes so highly abstracted that form can no longer be distinguished. The work then seems to consist only of material. Egberts shows people’s loneliness, the distance that exists between them and the way they interact with the world.