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