July-August 2020
UNRAVELINGS
This exhibit revolves around art, especially painting, looked at through the concept of deconstruction. We want to analyse the materials that are the building blocks on which painting exists and has existed for centuries but also the concept of painting itself. What is it and how does it give or create meaning? How complex is the meaning painting generates and can we even be sure of it?
Since Derrida used the notion of deconstruction in the 1970’s it has influenced and dominated art and literature. This exhibit will focus on what form deconstruction has taken today and what it means for contemporary artists and art.
The exhibition will take place from 24 July - 10 August 2020. Participating artists are from Colombia, Belgium and the Netherlands.
24 Jul - 08 Aug
Opening: 25 Jul 2-6 p.m.
Daily 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Except mondays.
ARTISTS
PROGRAM
PROGRAM
The following texts of the exhibition are a mix of the own words of the artists and the words of Parce. Therefore, they include individual appreciations of every artist and the perspective, thoughts and dialogues that the organizors found while organizing and creating this exhibition.
Mateo Cohen (COL)
Title: No title ("The Green one"), in progress (see photo)
Year: 2020
Technique: Recycled oil painting, bubble wrap
Format: 150 x 170 cm
Title: No title ("The Diptych"), in progress (see photo)
Year: 2020
Technique: Oil painting on plastic on wooden frame
Format: Diptych: two works of 120 x 100 cm each
Mateo: " I build my paintings in layers. I understand layers, not only as color layers but as material layers, where every trail, every feature in it (like the canvas or the exhibition space) plays a fundamental role in the process of building an image. I not only add layers, but also subtract them. So when I open the threads of the canvas, or pull off the paint, I am trying to activate the materials as „layers" in the painting. Even though I am only reacting to form, color, texture and format as a painter would do, my paintings do not look like paintings at all, due to this way of working. The spectator recognizes my works rather as wall objects than paintings. That means that their material characteristics do not fit in to the category of painting, which can mean that the spectator does not see an image at all. For me they do show some kind of depth and composition, even if it is a minimal one. They do talk about fragility and unrest, about the simplicity and mortality of art and the objects that signifies it. But paintings have always been shadowy objects full of secrets which slowly unveil themselves in front of us. And so I like to think of my own artistic practice as an exercise of building secrets by means of unveiling the obvious."
Mateo Cohen is a visual artist living and working in Berlin, Germany and Bogotá, Colombia. He studied at Los Andes University in Bogota and the university of the Arts in Berlin, where he received his master’s degree in the fine arts in 2012. He was a nominee for Nominee for the Residence scholarship „Junge Kunst in Essen and the „Meisterschülerpreis des Präsidenten“ of the University of the Arts Berlin in Berlin in 2012.
Mateo: "I paint images that seek to not put objects in front of the viewer's gaze. I clear out the surface of object-like painterly impressions in order to keep the image empty and to escape from any figure-background relationships. Thereby, the viewer enters through the surface of the painting into the image's space and comes out to the surface leaving the image behind. In other words: we experience (while moving with perception) the image as within a given surface (matter) and the surface as the construction of a given image (composition).
This attempt could be understood as a simple exercise of arranging the painting's building parts, that leads to nothing else but to painting itself. However, the resulting works seem not to be easily defined under this category. The use of frames, canvas and paint sets a context for my artistic practice and in the search of ways to relate these “materials” with one another, keeping borders, frames or definitions between means of image-making (drawing, sculpture, painting...) is no longer relevant.
For me, it seems more relevant to unfold the complexity of the surface and explore, through the act of painting, how space is concealed and disclosed by matter. In other words: how images come into being."
Charlie De Voet (BE)
Title: Weary Painting II
Year: 2019
Technique: oil on canvas
Format: 35 x 42 cm
This work is part of the ‘Weary Paintings’-series, works about the doubling or a ‘work-inside-a-work’; the layers of paint that are pictured on the painting like a trompe-l’oeil are literally scraped of a painting and transported to another one…
In his series of paintings ('Weary Painting I, II, III, IV, V, VI', 2019) we notice the humoresque irony. With a typical Charlie De Voet-monochrome the skin of the paint simply slides off the canvas to the floor, or the paint curls upwards (like a tear-off calendar). Once again, the artist plays with the trompe l'oeil effect: recesses of partly unprepared canvas, illusionistic umbra, perspective representation of 'the painting-in-the-painting'. It is remarkable that the fragments of paint skin are literally transplanted from other paintings. (Hans Martens, 2020)
Title: A Painting As A Disguise For Self-Portrait As A Monster/Jester
Year: 2019
Technique: mask made entirely of oil paint, thread, tinklers, on mannequin head on steel stand
Format: 62x53x174cm
De Voet: "This work, which is close to my heart, consists of a real mask that is completely made up of a sheet of oil paint that has been scraped from a painting (a painting representing a degradation sky), after which the painting was turned inside out and sewn together, so that the 'air' is on the inside of the mask and the released muck of the underlying layers is visible on the outside. Later the "horns" or ears of a madcap were added.
I consider this spatial painting as a disguise for a self-portrait (the eyes of the mask are exactly at my eye level); in my eyes it is a mask that shows rather than conceals ..."
Charlie de Voet lives in Zulzeke and works in Ronse. He also works part-time at Mark Manders' studio as Assistant Artist. He graduated with distinction in 2007 at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) at Ghent. He received an Honourable Mention in the Grote Prijs Ernest Albert (2018) and received Third Prize at the Landscape Prize Michel Depyre (2016).
His paintings exist of many layers atop each other, from paper-thin to very thick. He describes it himself as a very labor-intensive act where the layers become more and more rough towards the end. The upper layer that arises carries traces of the used brushes, the drying process and the impact of outer forces (like gravity) on the skin of the painting. This “skin” is tactile and vulnerable, and seduces the viewer to study the work close-up and wanting to touch it, which is forbidden. Not being able/allowed to touch it and desiring to do that becomes part of the experience.
The fact that things aren’t always what they seem is also an apparent fascination of the artist. He likes to play with the technique of trompe l’oeil through placing a peephole, framework or a sphere into the painting as strange figures that disturb the illusion of flatness and replace it with a feeling of three-dimensionality.
“The art of Charlie De Voet shows the (in)capability of capturing the visual stimuli and mental images or views in one image, an alpha and omega, the all or nothing.” (Hans Martens)
Johan Gelper (BE)
Title: Equilibrium with borrowed forms
Year: 2019
Technique: sculpture of steel, stone, plexiglass, polyester, epoxy, steel wire, aluminium and paint
Format: 260 x 215 x 180 cm
This sculpture is the result of a series of experiments that construct balanced systems of order in a process where found objects are organized and combined in a new constellation.
Johan Gelper was born in Kapellen and lives and works in Ghent. He studied painting at Sint-Lucas in Ghent and also obtained his postgraduate degree at KASK. His work can be found in many public collections, amongst others those of the SMAK, Verbeke Foundation and the SONS Museum. He exhibits frequently in Belgium and Europe.
What distinguishes Johan Gelper’s work is his playful method of tracing. He tracks, discovers, draws, and accentuates a movement that seems to connect the immaterial world with the reality of tangible objects. The mental world of ideas and thoughts, which attract and repel, engage and disengage, open and close, take on surprising forms in Gelper’s work.
These forms are created by careful exploration, observation and sensing of the environment. His play on proportions colours the game of acceptance and avoidance. Found objects are combined to create a new situation. Connections are added with purifying precision, the artist always respecting the random nature of playful elements. His witty take on human attempts to make sense of the world, his tireless exploration of mediums and techniques, gives a lighthearted appearance to the work. Johan Gelper’s sense of aesthetics, which enables him to expose the true nature of objects, is especially admirable.
Gelper’s design makes fragments of our thoughts perceptable in space. A space that directs our thoughts and actions: front is connected to back, above is set in opposition to below, depth and surface complement each other, speed gives perspective to standing still, and so on.
The beauty of his work is not static, but is reflected in the dynamically vibrant balance between what creates human beings and what shapes and directs them.
Text by Lief Brijs (2016), translation by Kathy Kayser
Jonas Vansteenkiste (BE)
Title: "Hütte" sculptures, new version of existing series
Year: 2020
Technique: metal, wood, tread, leather and fake leather
Format: 170 x 50 x 60 cm
Breaking down the false certainties and the constructed identity of the house has become a constant in the work of Jonas Vansteenkiste. His purpose is to unravel the structure of the house, both materially and mentally. A stripping of personality in a pile of stereotypical structures or representing neon signs as hollow dreams. Quite a few 'sacred houses' are knocked over in this oeuvre, not in the least the deceptive feeling of security, sweetness or cosiness.
With the title "Hütte" for his recent installations, Jonas Vansteenkiste hammers an etymological nail that holds together several layers of meaning. Middle English, Old French, Dutch, Frisian, Danish and even Yiddish (hoyt) know forms of this word, going back to Germanic, Proto-Germanic and even proto-Indo-European languages. It means "cover" or "conceal" and can serve as a meager house (the hut as is known to us), the skin that covers us (skin) and something that hides (to hide). As the ultimate limit of our body, the skin is the largest human organ. It is our "interface" with the environment. It literally holds us back and it is the surface that presents us to the outside world. Consequently, it provides a grateful metaphor for our personality.
For the design of his strange 'Hütte', as a child of his time, Jonas dug into the artificial, man-made and thus cultural interpretations of 'skin': a wide range of carefully selected types of leather and simili (synthetic) leather, sewn together by hand to form a cluster, suspended from an industrially manufactured metal rod or hook. In this way he cleverly swings us back and forth between a very basic, almost ritual aspect of animal skin and the contemporary distance from fake materials. The artist refers to the cradle of architecture: the 'covering' with animal skins or tissues. Theorists such as Gottfried Semper or Adolf Loos saw the origin of the house in that "flaccid hut" or "second skin", while fixed walls were only added later. But there's more. Vansteenkiste's hut seems to coincide with the identity of its resident. He carefully chooses the colors ranging from light brown to pale pink and mid-tone colors for a subtle suggestion of bare human skin. Here and there, sewn-in classic windows or doors on a modeling scale remind us that this "skin" is actually abandoned architecture. The convergence of the terms "house" and "skin" take on the strange sight of a cloak that was hung away. Where is the creature that so casually left his last defense here? Is it irrevocably solved, or did another ‘outside cloak’ grow silently under this skin, like a butterfly squeezing itself out of its cocoon or a snake getting rid of its old scales from time to time? Can the "Hütte" symbolize the artist, who in all his disarming vulnerability exposes himself to the world completely and may even succumb to it? Or does he operate cunningly and take on a different form as a strategy from time to time, like a new building for the imagination?
Jonas Vansteenkiste lives and works in Kortrijk. He obtained his master as well as his post-master in art & design at the KASK in Ghent. He particpated in many (inter)national exhibitions and received various (inter)national grants and residencies, amongst others the Rucka Artist Residency in Latvia (2020) and a residency at the ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin (2016).
The works of the artist Jonas Vansteenkiste are defined by spaces. He uses several media, i.e. installations, video, sculpture, photos and drawings. He refers and uses – both in a physical and psychological way – architectural elements.
He builds up spaces, or creates situations which can best be defined as "mental spaces". Mental spaces have a resemblance with "Denkraum", a notion mostly found in philosophy and architecture. "Denkraum" can be seen as building walls, not only in but also from the chaos of one's own perception, emotions and thoughts to express in a clear way these experiences and feelings.
Keeping this in mind, Jonas defines and creates his works. These works depart from a personal experience where the anecdotal is moved
to the background where it is further purified into a "basso continuo" used to build upon. He approaches the medium "installation" as one of reference and experience. He thus places the spectator in an active role: he invites him to step into the work and situate himself – both mentally and physically – in it.
The artist also leaves room for the spectator to add his own personal experiences in these installations, which are not only the "relevant" place for the artist, but also for the spectator.
The same exercise is repeated in his drawings: these spaces are more personal so a spectator is only invited by a gaze…
Bernardo Montoya (COL)
Title: pintura pintura 1 ("painting-painting 1")
Year: 2011
Technique: various
Format: 150 x 200 x 10 cm
The Paintings-Paintings are works made by Bernardo Montoya that reflect on the possibilities of Painting thought of as an expanded field, so what can be seen in them are not Paintings themselves, but pictorial signs. For example, some of the pieces are similar to rocks, made by superimposing layers of paint on other layers of paint whilst using industrial materials and procedures. These paintings can be seen as a kind of fossil composed of years of sedimentation of layers of paint, intervened and located in space by the artist to enhance their pictorial condition. They show the process of building layers of paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint on other layers of paint, including all its stains and residues, emphasizing the idea of the pictorial process. But at the same time, the action of painting is pointed out - the idea of work and process, at the same time questioning the possibility that its nature is spontaneous - through the theatrical setting of the works. These paintings, which are nothing more than the sum of paint over other layers of paint over other layers of paint over other layers of paint over other layers of paint that escaped the traditional limits of the frame to enter in a dialogue with the space that surrounds them. They are installed as the presence of a perennial event; of an act that appears naked before our eyes, without mysteries: illuminated. IThey are an invitation to see the indexes of these paintings as things in themselves and not only as a means with an external purpose.
Bernardo Montoya lives and works in Bogotá, where he founded and runs Salón Comunal, a space for contemporary art. He studied plastic arts (2006) and a Master in Art History and Theory of Modern and Contemporary Art (2009) in Los Andes University in Bogotá as well as Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid (2004). He has exhibited internationally and curated many exhibitions. His work is part of the Art Collection of the Friends of Art Collections Foundation of the Banco de la República de Colombia-MAMU. He was selected to participate in the III Bogotá Plastic and Visual Arts Biennial Prize (2014) and received an honorable mention in the V Two-Dimensional Art Salon (Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, 2011).
He works with stratigraphies, layers of paint and formations of volumes from pictorial fluids. His works show paths that establish relationships between science and art and between natural objects and man-made objects.
Although Montoya became an artist in the form of a painter, he increasingly views this medium as an expanded discipline. He advocates a painting that escapes the frame: a painting that no longer depends on any support or restriction; but that depends only on itself. In its purest materiality, the painting reveals each of the overlapping layers throughout its production process up until the painting is formed. On its way it exposes decisions, errors and accidents, herewith raising the dialectic between the spontaneous and the natural.
Laura Peña (COL)
Artist Laura Peña will show the following work (finished):
Title: Dust sculpture #1
Year: 2019
Technique: Dust sculpture/painting
Format: 105 x 67 x 9 cm
Laura: "I think of my work as a process in layers. But instead of adding and subtracting layers of paint, I subtract dust (materials of a construction for example) by way of scratching it off something (like a wall, a building, a structure) during several days. This removing of dust off the wall or structure becomes painting for me. Even when I create it into a sculpture, I feel that it is an inquiry in painting. The colour is particularly important. For example, after scratching I carefully select the colours so I can have different pigments. In this particular structure, I was thinking in terms of composition, colour and all the elements that a painting exists out off. At the same time, I think a lot in the idea of a portrait, but it is a portrait that has no face but has time, information, nostalgia, etc. These are equally important in the portraits."
""My work is an approach to how our existence is modeled and defined throughout life by notions of meaning that decide what is considered “reality” and how that “reality” –perhaps matter- and “we”, exist beyond our notions. I’m interested in the way in which subjectivity and our perceptions have been conditioned by instructions, knowledge, prejudices, rites and myths that are rehearsed and apprehended throughout our lives. This is reflected in my work as a poetic in which revelations and concealments make it possible to believe that reality is not as we see it, leading to the consciousness of a reality that does not exist as determined by that consciousness."
Laura Peña is a Colombian artist who lives and works in Ghent. She participated in and curated various exhibitions in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Belgium. She was the 2014 artist-in-residence for the La Mancha project invited by artist Luis Hernandez Mellizo and organized by La Paternal Espacio Proyecto LPEP in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the 2015 selected project of the #15 Regional Hall of the Colombian Cultural Ministry’s Curatorial Project and the #8 Young Art Hall (El Nogal, Bogotá). Laura is the founder of Parce, an art initiative that she connects with her own art. Her work has always been linked to identity, the search to find oneself but also the self in relation to others: Humans in relation to the humanity to which it belongs. For her, the projects she organizes through Parce are the unavoidable outcome of being connected with others and sharing in something beyond yourself.
The work of Laura is essentially a search for identity, a search to the meaning of the portrait as a concept and a collective notion. What makes the portrait a portrait? By dissecting the elements of the possible identity of a physical space, Laura tries to find answers to that question.
Laura: "I think of my work as a process in layers. Instead of adding and subtracting layers of paint, I subtract dust (remains of an old construction for example) by way of scratching it off something (like a wall, a bed, a door...) during several days. This removing of dust becomes a dialogue and I find there is a similarity in the action of removing and the action of painting. Even when I create it into a sculpture, I feel that there is an inquiry to the portrait. The colour is particularly important, is the way I discover the story of what I am scratching similar to how you discover the story of a face when painting or photographing marks such as wrinkles. After scratching I also carefully select the colours so I can have different pigments to “stamp” what I have discovered. In this particular structure, I was thinking in terms of composition, colour and all the elements that a painting exists out off. It is a portrait that has no face but has time, information, nostalgia, and other elements from the subject I selected and from myself in relation to that self"
Lorena Espitia (COL)
Title: Paused Relay
Year: 2019
Technique: video, 15:55 minutes
Format: variable
Title: Cruise Control Runs Remote
Year: 2016
Technique: video, 02:40 minutes
Format: variable
Title: Cruise Control Runs Remote
Year: 2016
Technique: video, 03:41 minutes
Format: variable
Lorena: "My work is grounded on a group of video exercises through which I am trying to explore the idea of a landscape as the representation of an individual place and the power of basic operations of video taping and editing to activate some dormant powers in this old idea of "a landscape". By documenting chance encounters with some places that are "part" of what I can presently call "here" I am getting a sense of the different ways in which a place can be "meaningful" and/or "meaningless" (from the point of view of human or natural history, aesthetically, for me, for others, for the camera)."
Lorena Espitia lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. She has a BFA from the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, California. She exhibits frequently in Latin-America, the U.S. and Europe. She has participated in various residencies in Germany, Colombia and Mexico and has won many young art talent awards (a.o. Artecámara seccion 2018).
Lorena’s work is a dialogue with painting and questions it. The idea of what painting, and the painter, actually is is socially defined and limited (although various).
Lorena: “Often, my projects respond to specific circumstances that allow me to destabilize my own position as an artist by exploring heterogeneous representational strategies—those of advertising and graphic design, of the early Russian avant-gardes and popularized paleontological knowledge, of Godard's early films and vernacular science fiction—and by researching the possibilities of unfamiliar materials.”
Polien Boons (BE)
Title: Untitled
Year: 2020
Technique: collage, paper on paper.
Format: 2 collages of 83 x 113 cm each
Polien: "I always draw inspiration for my own visual work from an open-minded attitude of wonder with which I perceive the world around me. The human urge and failure to control the world around us is linked to the all-pervading power of nature, thereby resulting in a fascination for the notion of the sublime. Throughout my artistic work, I have always been fascinated by the human urge to subject everything to ourselves. Man as the centre, the reference point in the universe. Mankind tries to divide the world through mathematics and technology, to make it understandable, to form it into structures. Yet, my works often show that this desire is unattainable: nature cannot be grasped by the human ratio. Wide areas therefore have my preference. Galaxies, mountain landscapes, sea views etc.
For this exhibition, I have chosen to show 2 new collages. For me this is a method that precedes my installations, the construction for my installations is formed in this way.
Polien Boons lives and works in Mechelen and graduated LUCA School of Arts in Brussels in 2014. She exhibits frequently in the Benelux and France and was the artist-in-residence at the STRT kit Antwerpen 2016- 2017. Her works analyse and deconstruct the spatial realities that surround us, through the medium of collage. She was inspired in her way of perceiving the world by authors like Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, like in his work Espèces d'espaces (1974) in which he describes the space around himself in an very literal, objective way. Polien also uses this objective method in her collages and installations where she starts with deconstructing form by cutting abstract figures but then goes through the very human process of reconstruction, organising and recreating meaning. Her focus lies on the human necessity to make sense out of things, to organise and construct everything around us and the human failure to cope with the chaos surrounding us.
Colour also fascinates her, specifically structural colours that reflect light and never fade. These are to be found in nature on the wings of beetles and morpho-butterflies. She uses this motif in her work and would like to make some sort of paint out of these colours which would never fade and never have to be restored.
Barbara Rink (NL)
Title: When There’s Nothing Left To Say (installation)
Year: 2020
Technique: installation: acrylic on paper and wood
Format: aprox. 3 x 3 metres
Title: Still#1
Year: 2019
Technique: Giclee print on Hahnemuhle Rag Paper
Format: Diptych, total: 50 x 140 cm
Grasping for the energetic aspects of colors themselves, Rink’s pop-up sculptures are like casting spells into the surrounding space. Escapism and temporality are driving forces in her
work that bring abstraction together with traditional painterly aspects in new forms.
Illusion, two-and three dimensionality and the relation between painting and architecture inform Rink’s installations of painted paper, projections and photography, while exploring the limits and possibilities of painting itself.
Barbara Rink lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). After receiving a BFA from the Royal Academy of Art at The Hague her work has been shown in The Netherlands as well as internationally. She has participated in various artist-residencies including URRA in Argentina, Santa Fe Art Institute (USA) and Vermont Studio Center (USA). Alongside her artistic practice Barbara Rink teaches film at Eye film museum. She is a recurring art tutor at the Minerva Academy of Art in Groningen and at the Artez School of Interior Design in Zwolle. In her installation work Barbara uses the basic elements of painting as sculptural components. She dissects painting into enlarged cut out shapes, gradients, lines, shadow and light. These come together in fragile looking structures, mirroring constructions of the mind. By suggesting different moments in time happening at the same instant like falling apart and being under construction, she investigates organic and cyclical processes while adding a performative quality to the fixed works. Engaging with a perspective of magical thinking she considers the possibilities of painting and color as means of exploring three-dimensional space.
Juan R. Varon (COL)
Title: Blue Painting
Year: 2020
Technique: oil on canvas
Format: 110 x 150 cm each
Varon: "At first, I'm triggered by situations I see in the world. I wonder about them, I’m curious about how they are: about the possibility of their precise visual configuration that couldn’t have come from my mind.
To me, painting is a place to respond to those situations since, through representation, it’s trying to understand them. But what is exciting about painting is to stumble in the process: in the path of mimesis, new unforeseen events occur on the surface. These new events (overlapping layers, clusters of pigment) arise tensions in relation to the canvas. I’m interested in the presence of painting, the tension it can convey, rather than its image.
If making art is giving an affirmation to the world, then the unforeseen, or the genuine character of the material, is a value I cherish to share."
Juan R. Varon is a Colombian artist who lives and works in Belgium and Colombia. He was the 2016 artist-in-residence at the CAMAC Centre d’art Marnay Art Center in France. He exhibits frequently in Latin-America and elsewhere.
Lieven Cateau (BE)
Title: City Walks
Year: 2020
Technique: Series of ten wood panels, painted with acrylic paint and various varnishes.
Format: 40 x 30 cm (4 times); 33 x 26 cm; 25 x 20,8 cm(3 times); 24 x 19 cm; 23 x 20 cm
Lieven: "These ten works refer to my fascination for urban structures. The idea for these presentations originated in mUmbai and Bangkok. Once at work, I experience the series as choreographies and scores that are subject to constant changes. The series consists of ten smaller wood panels, painted with acrylic paint and various varnishes. The ten works bear the title "City Walks"."
Lieven Cateau did not really have any training outside of ‘Advertising Design’ at Luca School Of Arts. He never really finished studies at other institutes but rather tasted them. Since the turn of the century, he has been active as a curator of larger art events and the driving force behind smaller art centers. He operates under the name ‘Strictly Rabbit’.
For years, Lieven Cateau has resided in gigantic world cities for certain moments of time. The work he has made since then arises from recurring, repetitive elements. During the working process, those ingredients are gradually destroyed by devising slopes. The lines of thought mean that spontaneous looking tracks are applied. The work is only finished when it radiates tranquility. The same tranquility that befalls the artist the moment he manages to fathom the rhythm of a certain city. It’s about ordering chaos.
The last series of works is inspired by the bus traffic in Lima. It deals with the situations that arise at overcrowded traffic points. A never-ending, thunderous steel carousel captured by an ever swelling mass of passengers. A never-before-invented dance choreography. You can also approach the works as music scores, in witch spheres represent percussion, lines for other instruments.
Text by Laura Morani
Sonja Geens (BE)
Title: Layers muffle the sound (1,2,3,4,5)
Year: 2020
Technique: beeswax, tree resin, oil paint, wood
Format: 30 x 40 cm each
The work is inspired by weathered texts of old gravestones. Times erases the words and holds what is really important.
The work exists out of thin layers of wax. Every new layer builds on the previous one underneath: it penetrates, melts, casts away, softens, strengthens, fills, troubles,…
The unreadable scriptures are “listening exercises”, born out of a desire to still and connect.
The more layers you scrape off, the more the silence lets itself be heard.
Sonja studied ‘Geaggregeerde voor het lager secundair onderwijs, beeldende vorming' at the Sint-Maria institute in Antwerp, after which she was a lecturer of visual education in the kdG-teacher training for 30 years. She now lives and works in Ghent, where she runs the Re-Mains gallery with her partner. In addition, they exhibit their work at numerous group exhibitions (including Watou 2019 City Festival) and other cultural projects. With their gallery Re-Mains they participate annually in the gallery event Ghent Soirees and in GANDA (Ghent Antiques Design Art).
She paints with acrylic paint and adapts skinny paint layers with water, sandpaper and resin. She also works with fragile materials such as beeswax, old paper, gauze and antique textiles.
She finds her inspiration in the small and in coincidence, from which she filters images of a shaky reality or of a place in the memory. Her work is sober, monochrome ,vulnerable and dubitable.
Gert van Dessel (BE)
Title: Random cuttings 1, 2, 3, 4 with open frame 1, 2, 3, 4
Year: 2020
Technique: paper, textile, pigments, resin
Format: 52 x 32 x 2 cm per cutting
The work is a compilation of cut paper which forms a random pattern. This pattern is filtered by a textile covering it and shows through the resin.
Gert graduated with highest distinction in visual art at HONIM (Higher Education of Imelda) in Brussels. Gert lives and works in Ghent where he runs the Re-Mains gallery together with his partner. In addition, they exhibit their work at numerous group exhibitions (including Watou 2019 City Festival) and other cultural projects. With their gallery Re-Mains they participate annually in the gallery event Ghent Soirees and in GANDA (Ghent Antiques Design Art).
He works with synthetic resin and found objects. His nomadic search provides an archive of weathered materials. He manipulates the old findings and combines them with new materials through which he connects past and present. His traditional method of working and extensive material research gives unexpected textures and connections.
Emma van Roey (BE)
Title: Forever until it is no more
Year: 2020
Technique: white sand, textile yarn and paraffin
Format: variable (6 works)
These works were created through my fascination for time and my attempts to get a grip on it. The present, that period of uncertainty, is something I try to lay my hands on in an obsessive, tactile way with unproductive, wasted, excessive time, activities that do not lead to the creation of any durable project. After making the works I leave it, let the work and material decide the end result. The work keeps changing and demolishes itself.
Emma van Roey is a Belgian artist working in Ghent and Maastricht. She finished her master in 2016 at LUCA School of Arts Ghent. She exhibits frequently in the Benelux and Switzerland. She was the 2019 artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck in Maastricht. She creates installations that ask to reflect on time through the vulnerable, tactile process of repetitive working with sand, wire and wood.
She creates installations that ask to reflect on time through the vulnerable, tactile process of repetitive working with sand, wire and wood. Her sculptures exist in the moment and seem to cling together in an almost poetic way, monumental in the space but fragile in the endlessness that surrounds it. In repeating what one could call “useless” acts, for her a way to get a grip over something elusive, she reminds us about the impossibilities of holding on to things.
“Emma’s images are attempts to wrap and hold what one cannot wrap and hold. Time intervenes yet during the making, but Emma goes on until that one intended image exists for a moment. Then she leaves it to time and decay. The lost image lays on the ground as loose sand, calling the viewer and raising questions.”
Project direction by
LAURA PEÑA
in collaboration with
JOLIEN VERDOODT
The exhibition is based on the connections of people from different places. The project is organized on the basis of collaboration, from our own funds (by way of self-management) and the funds of the artists. We are trying to collect some recourses in order to assist some artists with covering part of their travel and transportation costs. If you want to support us, in general or for a specific project, please follow the link below to find out how.