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Manuela Klerkx
Ballroom Revisited: 5 Belgium artists
During Antwerp Art Weekend the third edition of "Ballroom Project" took place. This time in the 'Borgerhub', a stately but attractive mansion that used to serve as the courthouse in the bustling, multicultural district of Borgerhout. The "Ballroom Project" is an initiative of Ida Wollens (DMW Gallery) and Bart Vanderbiesen (Base-Alpha Gallery) who annually invite some 20 Dutch and non-Antwerp galleries from Belgium to participate with a maximum of three artists per gallery. The event is midway between an art fair - but without gallery owners eager to sell, without booths and without price lists - and a group exhibition, wonderfully curated by Yirka De Brucker.
Also this year, 'Ballroom' - especially since it was the first cultural event after more than a year for most of us - was again a surprising, often exciting combination of artists and artworks: small-scale but with allure.
On this occasion, I visited or zoomed with one artist per participating Belgian gallery whose work is both on GalleryViewer and Ballroom. For those who were not present at "Ballroom" and have not yet viewed the online catalogue, here are some excerpts from the various conversations. I hope they contribute to a better understanding of the work of these very different, yet fascinating artists.
Also this year, 'Ballroom' - especially since it was the first cultural event after more than a year for most of us - was again a surprising, often exciting combination of artists and artworks: small-scale but with allure.
On this occasion, I visited or zoomed with one artist per participating Belgian gallery whose work is both on GalleryViewer and Ballroom. For those who were not present at "Ballroom" and have not yet viewed the online catalogue, here are some excerpts from the various conversations. I hope they contribute to a better understanding of the work of these very different, yet fascinating artists.
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In her article for The Art Couch, Annelies Vanbelle writes about the painting of Adelheid De Witte:
Logic in the manner of Adelheid De Witte, challenging games with your perception that bring you out of balance until you feel just as orphaned as a sole survivor of a flood. That is why we warn you: keep an eye on this lady. Anyone who is capable of doing this, has everything set to become a very big one.
So you have been warned: we will be hearing a lot more from Adelheid. And especially when you consider that she has only been taking her first steps in the art world since 2020, at the age of 36; that she was trained as a philosopher – she even planned to do a PhD - and it wasn't until she left for a residence in Barcelona where she initially made installations that she realized she wanted to be an artist. What makes everything even more special is that although she started with installations, her focus soon shifted to painting. She now combines both media, which offers her more opportunities to investigate the relationship between painting and physical space.
Precisely because she is self-taught as a painter and a philosopher by training, her work creates a dynamic in which the core of both disciplines come together in an extremely subtle and personal way. As befits a philosopher, she starts from an inner world, probably from an unconscious desire to better understand herself and the world around her. And that explains why her paintings are so atmospheric: they seem to express inner moods and mental structures that can sometimes be light-footed and hopeful and at other times threatening and frightening. I experience her canvases as inner landscapes that may show similarities with the real world, but were never made with those intentions.
(Barbé-Urbain)
Logic in the manner of Adelheid De Witte, challenging games with your perception that bring you out of balance until you feel just as orphaned as a sole survivor of a flood. That is why we warn you: keep an eye on this lady. Anyone who is capable of doing this, has everything set to become a very big one.
So you have been warned: we will be hearing a lot more from Adelheid. And especially when you consider that she has only been taking her first steps in the art world since 2020, at the age of 36; that she was trained as a philosopher – she even planned to do a PhD - and it wasn't until she left for a residence in Barcelona where she initially made installations that she realized she wanted to be an artist. What makes everything even more special is that although she started with installations, her focus soon shifted to painting. She now combines both media, which offers her more opportunities to investigate the relationship between painting and physical space.
Precisely because she is self-taught as a painter and a philosopher by training, her work creates a dynamic in which the core of both disciplines come together in an extremely subtle and personal way. As befits a philosopher, she starts from an inner world, probably from an unconscious desire to better understand herself and the world around her. And that explains why her paintings are so atmospheric: they seem to express inner moods and mental structures that can sometimes be light-footed and hopeful and at other times threatening and frightening. I experience her canvases as inner landscapes that may show similarities with the real world, but were never made with those intentions.
(Barbé-Urbain)
Thomas Renwart (Les Monseigneurs)
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Les Monseigneurs is the nom de plume of Thomas Renwart (1995), a young artist who seems to have walked straight out of a 19th century French novel by the likes Huysmans or Baudelaire. Not because of the disdain for 'rascals and the weak-headed' or the melancholy both writers are typically associated with, but because of the high degree of refinement, the longing for beauty and love and the overall 'fin de siècle' feeling that his work exudes. Whereas in Huysmans’s and Baudelaire’s work the dark side of man and the associated 'suffering from life' prevail, Thomas’s work favours emotions such as longing, wonder, intimacy and eroticism shaped in unique, woven 'paintings' consisting of psychedelic patterns of flowers and butterflies, texts and symbolic references as in the following titles: 'Caméléon', 'Gilding the Lily', 'Partir dans la nuit' ('Leaving in the night'), 'C'est dans la tête que tout s'efface'('It is in the head where everything is erased ') refer to the more hidden - often erotic - symbolism present in the carpets. And to think that everything he makes stems on the one hand from his secluded life in a 17th-century Ghent Begijnhof monastery cell, which boasts a garden he has designed and an ever-expanding herbarium, and on the other hand has everything to do with nightlife and the associated ideal of freedom.
After graduating in 2019 from the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent in the field of textile design, Thomas has been in one exhibition after the other. That has been successful at it is evident from the two Henry Van de Velde Awards that he recently won. Craft plays a vital role in Thomas' work. It is not without reason that he won the Awards in the crafts category, together with Atelier Verilin, the Belgian weaving mill specializing in jacquard weaving where developed a series of unique linen tapestries. In addition to the love for arts & crafts and the loom, literature has also been a permanent source of inspiration since childhood.
(BruthausGallery)
After graduating in 2019 from the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent in the field of textile design, Thomas has been in one exhibition after the other. That has been successful at it is evident from the two Henry Van de Velde Awards that he recently won. Craft plays a vital role in Thomas' work. It is not without reason that he won the Awards in the crafts category, together with Atelier Verilin, the Belgian weaving mill specializing in jacquard weaving where developed a series of unique linen tapestries. In addition to the love for arts & crafts and the loom, literature has also been a permanent source of inspiration since childhood.
(BruthausGallery)