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Manuela Klerkx
Three up-and-coming Belgian artists
Eliza Pepermans, Amber Andrews, Fran van Coppenolle
We already knew that Belgium is an art-minded country. Where in the world are human tragedy and frivolity, the beautiful and the ugly, the temporal and the eternal depicted as beautifully as in Belgian painting since the Flemish Primitives of the 15th and early 16th centuries? They are true storytellers. From Jan van Eijck to Léon Spilliaert and from Pierre Alechinsky to Roger Raveel. Who better than Constant Permeke can portray the lives of Flemish sailors and their wives? And who can portray the grotesque and the carnivalesque, the 'unveiling of laughable humanity' more aptly than James Ensor? Together with René Magritte (surrealism) and Paul Delvaux (poetic realism), he marked Belgian classical modern painting in which narrative and realistic elements and fantasy go hand in hand. It is precisely this freedom of imagination and freedom of artistic expression that makes their art unparalleled and, to this day, a source of inspiration for many.
Think of Luc Tuymans who explained the importance of Spilliaert (whose work is darker and more pessimistic in tone but also more spiritual and minimal than that of his contemporaries), who is the underappreciated in Tuymans’s view, in the John Albert Jansen directed documentary 'In het licht van de argwaan'. In this collection I look for elements that make the art of three young, female Belgian artists so special. Different from those of their predecessors, but indebted to them. Since that too is characteristic of Belgian art: there is often less of a rift between successive generations than in the Netherlands. Belgian artists love innovation, but without ignoring the past or tradition. Precisely by referring to it, making fun of it or playing with it, they want to celebrate the past on the one hand and to relinquish it on the other. But let me get concrete with the help of the three women who storm the Belgian art world, albeit with the blues or frolicking, yet in a meaningful way.
We already knew that Belgium is an art-minded country. Where in the world are human tragedy and frivolity, the beautiful and the ugly, the temporal and the eternal depicted as beautifully as in Belgian painting since the Flemish Primitives of the 15th and early 16th centuries? They are true storytellers. From Jan van Eijck to Léon Spilliaert and from Pierre Alechinsky to Roger Raveel. Who better than Constant Permeke can portray the lives of Flemish sailors and their wives? And who can portray the grotesque and the carnivalesque, the 'unveiling of laughable humanity' more aptly than James Ensor? Together with René Magritte (surrealism) and Paul Delvaux (poetic realism), he marked Belgian classical modern painting in which narrative and realistic elements and fantasy go hand in hand. It is precisely this freedom of imagination and freedom of artistic expression that makes their art unparalleled and, to this day, a source of inspiration for many.
Think of Luc Tuymans who explained the importance of Spilliaert (whose work is darker and more pessimistic in tone but also more spiritual and minimal than that of his contemporaries), who is the underappreciated in Tuymans’s view, in the John Albert Jansen directed documentary 'In het licht van de argwaan'. In this collection I look for elements that make the art of three young, female Belgian artists so special. Different from those of their predecessors, but indebted to them. Since that too is characteristic of Belgian art: there is often less of a rift between successive generations than in the Netherlands. Belgian artists love innovation, but without ignoring the past or tradition. Precisely by referring to it, making fun of it or playing with it, they want to celebrate the past on the one hand and to relinquish it on the other. But let me get concrete with the help of the three women who storm the Belgian art world, albeit with the blues or frolicking, yet in a meaningful way.
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Amber Andrews and the blues
The Antwerp artist Amber Andrews (1994) draws on anything from Greek mythology, to the Renaissance, to film, modern art and African art for her paintings. She is not a storyteller but a story painter. Titles like 'All the Secrets, all the Smiles', 'What the Thunder Said', 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues', 'The Night Can Take so Many Forms', 'Your Nightmares Follow You Like a Shadow' illustrate her personal view on classical and modern painting. While we recognize influences from recent and centuries-old art history, she gives it a completely different spin. She is not a storyteller but a story painter.
For example, references to Picasso's 'Blue Period' in the painting 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' are put in a very different perspective due to the feminist and emotional connotations of the title. Not a triumphant man here, proudly seated on his horse, but a 'cowgirl with the blues'. Has she been abandoned? And if so by whom? A man, a woman (see portrait behind the 'cowgirl')? And what does the milk drinking foal mean? Does that indicate motherhood? The baby blues? It seems that Andrews is continuing where her male predecessors left off. By which I mean that she emphasizes the expressive sides of painting, the feelings an image can evoke, partly through the titles. As if she has looked to the old masters not only to understand what and how they paint but to see what they don't paint. And that's exactly what Andrews is trying to portray.
Andrews seems to be looking for meaning in the ambiguity and vulnerability of the protagonists and their environment, something her male predecessors missed for whatever reason. By seeing it with her feminine gaze and enriching it with her feminine touch, the artist gives a new, emotional twist to art history. As a result, the viewer suddenly sees more and history becomes more current.
(Represented by: Gallery Sofie van de Velde)
The Antwerp artist Amber Andrews (1994) draws on anything from Greek mythology, to the Renaissance, to film, modern art and African art for her paintings. She is not a storyteller but a story painter. Titles like 'All the Secrets, all the Smiles', 'What the Thunder Said', 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues', 'The Night Can Take so Many Forms', 'Your Nightmares Follow You Like a Shadow' illustrate her personal view on classical and modern painting. While we recognize influences from recent and centuries-old art history, she gives it a completely different spin. She is not a storyteller but a story painter.
For example, references to Picasso's 'Blue Period' in the painting 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' are put in a very different perspective due to the feminist and emotional connotations of the title. Not a triumphant man here, proudly seated on his horse, but a 'cowgirl with the blues'. Has she been abandoned? And if so by whom? A man, a woman (see portrait behind the 'cowgirl')? And what does the milk drinking foal mean? Does that indicate motherhood? The baby blues? It seems that Andrews is continuing where her male predecessors left off. By which I mean that she emphasizes the expressive sides of painting, the feelings an image can evoke, partly through the titles. As if she has looked to the old masters not only to understand what and how they paint but to see what they don't paint. And that's exactly what Andrews is trying to portray.
Andrews seems to be looking for meaning in the ambiguity and vulnerability of the protagonists and their environment, something her male predecessors missed for whatever reason. By seeing it with her feminine gaze and enriching it with her feminine touch, the artist gives a new, emotional twist to art history. As a result, the viewer suddenly sees more and history becomes more current.
(Represented by: Gallery Sofie van de Velde)
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The 'bachelor machines' of sculptress Fran van Coppenolle
When I observe Fran van Coppenolle (1998, lives and works in Wingene) in her videos on Instagram, she reminds me of a wood nymph and when I see her work I think of a female Panamarenko. Curator, art critic and writer Hans Theys describes her as the 'patron saint of the gun turret, the suture line and the sawn, cut, pleated, welded, sanded and glued breathing spaces. sculptor. Fates. Air & light navigator.' I can’t describe her that beautifully, although I fully recognize her in this description. Van Coppenolle is not about making machines or the desire to fly, but about the poetry of the play between inside and outside, structure and emptiness, space and volume. In this way she creates images that you can indeed experience as 'breathing spaces'. Like a relic or a remnant of a non-existent world.
‘Complementary stimuli to the form,’ says Van Coppenolle, ‘they impact each other conflate like skin and skeleton. Always a palpable inside. A swirl of empty space in a taut volume makes the colours between the bones of the sculpture brighter.' You always see the inside as you can see through a skeleton. The titles refer as signs to a classification in colour, matter and quantity. Meanwhile, sculptures continue to frolic and chatter their own sign language in space.
Words such as 'frolic' and 'sign language' perfectly illustrate the 'soul' of Fran van Coppenolle's art in which 'surprisingly fresh materials are put under tension; clamped, braided, constricted, and threaded together until they form elusive, incomprehensible, captivating objects. Beautiful bachelor machines that unfold breathing space like an accordion into the world without asking anyone for permission.' (Hans Theys, Emergent, Veurne).
Her often hanging and moving sculptures refer to themselves as independent entities that radiate lust and life; and love for nature, for old and used materials. Van Coppenolle breathes new life into what is but is not noticed by creating shapes and volumes - from new fabrics and used materials - that have never existed before, and therefore already belong to the future.
(Represented by: Eva Steynen.Deviation(s))
When I observe Fran van Coppenolle (1998, lives and works in Wingene) in her videos on Instagram, she reminds me of a wood nymph and when I see her work I think of a female Panamarenko. Curator, art critic and writer Hans Theys describes her as the 'patron saint of the gun turret, the suture line and the sawn, cut, pleated, welded, sanded and glued breathing spaces. sculptor. Fates. Air & light navigator.' I can’t describe her that beautifully, although I fully recognize her in this description. Van Coppenolle is not about making machines or the desire to fly, but about the poetry of the play between inside and outside, structure and emptiness, space and volume. In this way she creates images that you can indeed experience as 'breathing spaces'. Like a relic or a remnant of a non-existent world.
‘Complementary stimuli to the form,’ says Van Coppenolle, ‘they impact each other conflate like skin and skeleton. Always a palpable inside. A swirl of empty space in a taut volume makes the colours between the bones of the sculpture brighter.' You always see the inside as you can see through a skeleton. The titles refer as signs to a classification in colour, matter and quantity. Meanwhile, sculptures continue to frolic and chatter their own sign language in space.
Words such as 'frolic' and 'sign language' perfectly illustrate the 'soul' of Fran van Coppenolle's art in which 'surprisingly fresh materials are put under tension; clamped, braided, constricted, and threaded together until they form elusive, incomprehensible, captivating objects. Beautiful bachelor machines that unfold breathing space like an accordion into the world without asking anyone for permission.' (Hans Theys, Emergent, Veurne).
Her often hanging and moving sculptures refer to themselves as independent entities that radiate lust and life; and love for nature, for old and used materials. Van Coppenolle breathes new life into what is but is not noticed by creating shapes and volumes - from new fabrics and used materials - that have never existed before, and therefore already belong to the future.
(Represented by: Eva Steynen.Deviation(s))