02 september 2021, Manuela Klerkx
Carole Vanderlinden: Painting as an ‘Acte de résistance’
A Vimeo video by Hans Theys from the series Art & Flatnixing gave me a peek inside Vanderlinden’s studio: mostly art books and sketchbooks, countless decorated biscuit tins, chests and boxes from every corner of the globe and lots and lots of paint and brushes. To get an idea of her work, picture ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, African art and modernist art movements like Dadaism and Cubism combined with folkloric, Eastern European themes with meaning in everyday life and expressed through rugs, rituals, poetry and narratives. Jumble all those styles and meanings together and you end up with a Vanderlinden painting. Her paintings do not fit into any one category – which is exactly her intention. The moment you think you recognise a style or element the original meaning evaporates because something doesn’t make sense. The individual elements - cutting and pasting is an essential part of her work - lose their original meaning in the composition of the painting and your attention is drawn to such artistic features as material, colour and space, instead of a narrative or element with an otherwise known meaning. Carole Vanderlinden (born in 1973 and currently living and working in Brussels) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) and the Luca School of the Arts in Ghent. Freedom, or rather the paradoxical impossibility of the search for freedom, is what drives her.
A few questions to Carole Vanderlinden about her exhibition at PLUS-ONE Gallery opening 4 September 2021.
Carole Vanderlinden, cerbère, 2021, Plus-One Gallery.
MK How did art enter your life?
CV Art has always been part of my life. It was never a choice. I simply enjoyed creating, drawing and painting, and from an early age, loved the solitude and silence that accompanied this. To me, art is a sort of ‘quiet thinking’ that helps me determine my position in everyday reality. Gilles Deleuze talks about art as an ‘acte de résistance’ (act of resistance) against life. That’s also how I see it: art is my way to keep going in life. Encounters with new people are part of that.
MK In a video, Annelies Nagels, curator of the Uppercut exhibition at De Warande in Turnhout (B), says that you view a painting as an ‘independent being’. Can you explain that?
CV By that I mean that I aspire to create a painting that is completely free. Autonomous. Nothing and no one is free. We all have to deal with contradictions and conflicts, with ‘collisions’ in our head. Painting is for me a way to accept all of those conflicts and collisions taking place in my head. It’s a reaction to the world, to that lack of freedom. On canvas, I’m free to make decisions, whether conscious or unconscious.
MK You use a variety of styles in your paintings. Figurative and abstract compositions alternate. Where does this diversity come from? And what do you believe a good painting requires?
CV I am completely uninterested in a specific style or movement. That type of categorisation is an invention by critics or art historians. It is more organised and people tend to look for certainty. The art market can also benefit from this. But for an artist, thinking in terms of labels is only an obstacle in his or her search for creativity and freedom. A good painting does not allow itself to be labelled. It is ‘hors catégorie’ (beyond categorisation) and that is why it endures.
MK How does an idea for a painting get born in your mind and how do you proceed once that idea has matured?
CV Anything can lead to a painting: an encounter, a children’s book or an old painting, a word, a beautiful object, etc. There are countless subjects that I can incorporate into my paintings. The idea does not usually develop until afterwards. As a result of the painting. That process takes place in waves. Sometimes, I’m suddenly surprised because I see something on the canvas that makes me immediately start thinking and working. I can’t explain how that happens, but it’s related to ‘seeing is believing’: I need to see and feel that I’m on the right track in order to challenge myself to make a good painting. I also let myself be guided by coincidence. If I see part of a painting I really like, I cut it out and stick it on the new painting and work from there.
MK Which artists/painters have influenced your work and why?
CV There is no point in sharing names of artists because any painting, good or bad, can have an influence. At the moment we pay a lot of attention to the work of female artists. Not that their work especially influences me, but I can recognize myself in their energy, in their 'spirit'. I also think I can identify with the circumstances in which they have been developed. Rose Wylie and Anna Bella Geiger, for example, are two female artists known for their unique and moving work, and whose determination as well as their humility inspire courage and command respect.
MK Any comments about the exhibition opening at the PLUS ONE Gallery?
CV I'm showing a series of twelve to fifteen new works. My job is done once all of those works are in the gallery. I hope they’ll go out into the world from there.
Carole Vanderlinden, Les regalia, 2021, Plus-One Gallery.
