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Manuela Klerkx
The end of an eventful year in 6 art works
It's December already. The last month of the year. A December different than usual. After all, it is the last month of an unusual year: Sinterklaas was different than usual, Christmas won’t be previous years, not to mention New Year's Eve. You can feel and see it everywhere: the shop windows are less exuberant; this year’s Christmas decorations are toned down and our purchasing behaviour has largely shifted from offline to online. Opposed to the drastic decrease in the number of Christmas drinks are the growing number of stalls on the canals where you can chat with a casual passer-by or a tourist who also up for socializing with a glass of steaming mulled wine or a cup of hot chocolate. Everyone seems to have more time and there seems to be more attention for each other again. Or am I mistaken and missing something and will life go on after Covid as if nothing had happened? Either way, my wish for the New Year is that all the pain and sorrow suffered from Covid will be a thing of the past, and that we will cherish all the good things we've gained from the virus. I hope we can once again enjoy museums, which are no longer overcrowded, galleries and art fairs, and that restaurants, cinemas and theatres offer enough space to not unintentionally bother your neighbour. Let me illustrate these feelings between hope and fear that I have left over from this year by the following six works of art.
1 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 27 Oeuvres disponibles
4 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 2 Recommandations
In Metropolis M, Malou Koster writes the following about the work of Natascha Libbert: "Libbert's work sharpens the eye with regard to a subject that is very topical and worrying for all of us. She invites us not to just accept the phenomena, to pay more attention to the details and the structures behind them. When it comes to the climate, vigilance is required, including that of the eye looking at a photo in an exhibition." Caution and vigilance are terms that pretty much sum up the year 2020. To prevent contracting a virus. But what happens if we use those qualities for our outlook on life, interactions with each other, the animals and the planet? Libbert’s work is about damage and resilience, and the - often devastating - influence of humans on nature. However, Covid has shown the devastating impact of nature on humans. Such a million-year-old mini organism can strike at any time and where does that leave us? Vigilance and caution are required always and everywhere: sometimes in order not to get sick and survive, sometimes to enjoy art, nature and your loved ones.
0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 8 Oeuvres disponibles
1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations
However subtle, the dawn is on the horizon. After the dark night, with its "Indigo Moon", day breaks. The first rays of the sun, pale and hesitant at first, will soon break through and colour the world. The Italian artist Roberta Gigante, who lives in Ghent, loves the moment when something is not yet clearly defined, is not yet whole or is falling apart; that brief moment when something does not or no longer coincides with his or her complete state of being. Gigante is "deeply fascinated by everything that is not (immediately) visible, in internal or forgotten forms, in small stories and in the pleasure of wonder in the everyday. Ideas, images and stories that come to her form the starting point for study, research and development within various disciplines. '(Source: databank.kunsten.be) Fragility, vulnerability, dynamics and transience seem to interest her more than concepts such as perfection, firmness and certainty. In the past year we have become aware again after decades of our vulnerability and the transience of life. Questions about disease and death are once again part of our lives, confronting us with the relativity and limits of the human brain and Western science which, while offering answers to many questions, remains indebted to the most important. Rather than shrinking from it, Roberta Gigante celebrates qualities such as vulnerability and transience in all their simplicity: a bouquet of flowers (or rather the suggestion of them), a space defined by nothing more than a choreography of different colours of paint splashes, a ray sunlight from neon, etc. As if to say, “Look at it and see its beauty, however fleeting or small and despite everything.
(Gallery: Kristof de Clercq Gallery)
(Gallery: Kristof de Clercq Gallery)
Marthe Wéry
1 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 10 Oeuvres disponibles
0 Spectacles ᛫ 3 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations
Time. I think our sense of time has changed over the past year. We speed and rush less. Rather we ask ourselves: do we really need to get in and out of the car or not? Do I really have to go to the office for a meeting or will a Zoom session do? The answer often comes down to the fact that we might as well stay at home because it can be done differently than we were used to, or because we simply don't have to. As a result, we experience less stress, the traffic jams are shorter, and we have more time to spend with each other - our roommates, family members - or alone. Often delicious, sometimes difficult or confronting. More than ever before, having a "home" has become a basic necessity. We travel less or not, and spend more time at home than ever before - there’s no escaping. If you feel trapped, misunderstood or unfree, Marthe Wéry's works offer comfort. Especially these soft and old pink pencil drawings on paper. I experience the colours and the texture of the surface as soft. Almost like a carpet. Together with Agnes Martin and a small number of others, Wéry was the only female artist to be included in the 1975 "Fundamental Painting" exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which focused on basic principles such as form, colour, format and painting technique. Because these were usually the result of a fixed thinking pattern, the paintings on display often evoked a strict, minimalist aesthetic. Wéry opposed what she called "dogmatic" approach to the Constructivists and geometric artists who initially inspired her. From the mid-1970s she would focus on drawing based on lines that were created on paper while she was at it and not as a result of a mental process. However, she would never let go of painting. Instead, she proceeded to replace the concept of a composition by structuring the entire surface and exchange the strict character of the line for the spherical character of colour. The warm simplicity and integrity of her visual language are particularly evident in the monochromes that lead to her breakthrough in the 1980s. And yes, a person can feel "at home" with that.
(Gallery: Geukens & De Vil)
(Gallery: Geukens & De Vil)
Sybille Pattscheck
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2 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations
After not having been to southern Italy for almost a year, I long for the Mediterranean sea with its deep blue or warm orange skies against which the bright white houses seem even whiter. It’s all about light. Something that we have to miss most of the time in Northern Europe. We take vitamin D pills or sit in front of a heat lamp to compensate for a lack of sunlight and to chase away gloomy feelings that dark or foggy days evoke. Sybille Pattscheck (lives and works in Cologne) is able with her work to evoke an atmosphere of light and colour in which you can literally lose yourself. Thanks to the use of transparent wax (on wood, glass or plexiglass) and an optical colour mixing, colour and light become a fluctuating visual experience. If I miss light and colour, it is enough to immerse myself in a space with large monochromes of Pattscheck where the unique effect between the surface and the edges add an extra dimension: 'The colour of the edge flows into the colour field of the image and creates a diffuse colour space with limitless depth. The painting of the edge appears in the picture plane as a coloured, immaterial light substance that illuminates the void.’ And with it, life itself. Especially on days that are dominated by nostalgia for the Mediterranean, so blue, so blue ...
(Gallery: Galerie van den Berge)
(Gallery: Galerie van den Berge)
Tanja Smit
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Tanja Smit's "text works" illustrate my feeling of the past year that existing patterns and ways of thinking, events and desires, experiences and thoughts are being discussed by Covid and must make way for new ones. The world has changed for good. A virus dormant for millions of years chooses its momentum. And not just like that, but according to the laws of nature. And we can only submit to that and at best adapt. All values and norms suddenly seem to be on edge. Because what is the importance of economic growth if almost the entire world has to wear a face mask? What is the value of nice summer weather if, as a result of the rise in temperature, exotic insects when the tiger mosquito reach our country and transmit deadly viruses? With her manual interventions in newspapers, magazines and books - in which texts partially or completely disappear - Smit strips existing facts and events, opinions and thoughts of their original meaning. We no longer see cohesion, existing connections and connections have disappeared. But don't be sad, Smit seems to say, because with her anarchist interventions she creates space for new meanings, ideas and views that could be much more in keeping with our times. That is why her art offers hope. We survive through play, while drawing. As long as we dare to let go, repaint and veer along.
(Gallery: Galerie Helder)
(Gallery: Galerie Helder)