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Fleur van Groningen

Fleur van Groningen: The intimate look

Fleur van Groningen (1982) is a well-known Flemish writer, columnist, journalist and cartoonist (The Art Couch, Knack). In the past she wrote and made cartoons for De Morgen, Goedele Magazine, De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad and NRC Handelsblad, among others. Her bestseller Life without Filter was published in 2017, followed by My child, my mirror and her debut novel Swingers (2020). If possible, she can be found in her studio. And if you ask this multi-talented what she prefers to do, she invariably answers: “Painting. Because then I am closest to myself.”

As a person I strive for real contact. As a writer and reader I look for the right words for this. As a painter and spectator I avoid them. I prefer to speak little about my art experience and at most in keywords. I am not looking for entertainment, confirmation, social criticism or shock. What matters is that something happens that makes me transcend myself, as it were. That I meet the maker in a wordless space, stripped of name, coat, time, shine. For me, intimacy is the connection between two inner worlds: that of the maker and that of the viewer. I rather find this in abstract art, where the anecdotal, narrative character of the figurative disappears and makes way for interpretation, silence and even contemplation. Or in slightly abstracted art: you look through the artist's glasses and thus broaden your view. With a bit of luck you will keep those glasses on and you will still see the fields, cities, clouds through those glasses on the return journey. And with even better luck, those glasses end up on your wall, as a lasting invitation to see differently.

(Photo Fleur van Groningen: : Seppe van Groeningen)

Ilse D'Hollander

1 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 2 Oeuvres disponibles

2 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

The work of Ilse D'Hollander (1968-1997, BE) is always a special, intimate encounter for me. D'Hollander grew up in Sint Niklaas, studied in Ghent and Antwerp, and died at the age of 29 in Zwalm. It was only twenty years after her suicide that she was discovered by the art world, leading to international exhibitions and lyrical reviews. D'Hollander's paintings, whether abstract or abstract expressionist, would often be the record of long walks through nature. She herself called her paintings a convergence of thoughts and painting itself: “As a painter I do not stand in front of my canvas as a neutral being, but as an acting being who invests his being in painting. My being is present in my action on the canvas.” It is that being – sensitive, vibrant, hopeful, powerful – that lives on in her paintings and touches the viewer, asks questions, confides in and leaves again: her colours make one wonder the loneliness confirmed by her end.*

(Gallery Sofie Van de Velde)

* www.nuus.be/2018/11/26/zwalmse-kunstenares-verovert-20-jaar-na-haar-dood-de-internationale-kunstwereld/

Wannes Lecompte

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 30 Oeuvres disponibles

6 Spectacles ᛫ 1 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

In my early twenties, I sometimes met Wannes Lecompte (1979, BE) in the Brussels nightlife where our contact was superficial. Only recently did I actually meet him: in daylight, on canvas. Floating, organic forms that do not make contact with the edge: fleeting, elusive, a moment that has passed. Fanning out like a pigeon's tail, ethereal use of colour, here and there weighted down by sharp darkness. As a child, Lecompte already had a studio in Brussels, where he still lives and works. He studied Visual Arts in Ghent, Antwerp and Berlin. His passion for breeding pigeons influences his oil paintings. He is fascinated by the process of painting, revealing what actually already is, surprising oneself. The final image interests him less: "When it's finished, the adventure is over." Lecompte makes brushes from pigeon feathers, sculptures from pigeon lofts. It is the work of a free bird, of someone who does exactly what he pleases and, out of passion for his medium, stays on the road. “The most intimate moment is when I have mixed my paint, meters away from my canvas, then start the walk to the canvas and on arrival decide not to carry out what I have come up with and intuitively choose something else. ” On November 14, his solo exhibition opens at Eva Steynen, where he will perform a performance with jazz pianist Jozef Dumoulin.

(Eva Steynen.Deviation(s))

Vicken Parsons

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 10 Oeuvres disponibles

1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Vicken Parsons (1957, UK) combines modesty, despair and resignation with almost transparent layers of oil paint on wood. Her soft, geometric compositions are inspired by existing or imagined landscapes and architecture. Her main tone is sober grey, here and there lit up with a warm, benevolent blue, a touch of mustard yellow or soft - almost white - orange. This particular painting touches me because of the simplicity, the melancholy, the presumed abstraction of a landscape that gives the viewer the feeling that, despite the misty environment, he is on his way to a tangible goal. It is a window to a life. Parsons studied at London's Slade School of Fine Art, makes sculpture as well as paintings and is married to the British artist Antony Gormley, whose earthy, bold sculptures contrast fascinatingly with Parson's thinness. Here, too, there is an intimacy that moves me: the alliance between two opposites, unification through complementation.

(Kristof De Clercq gallery)

Stefan Annerel

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 12 Oeuvres disponibles

2 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

Stefan Annerel (1970, BE) lives and works in Antwerp. With his abstract modernist compositions of wood, paint and shiny resin, he has detached himself from the traditional two-dimensionality of the varnished canvas. And with the calm that his geometry enforces, he invites the viewer to deeper, layered observations and to discover something unexpected. His small works are reminiscent of jewelery box lids; something you want to open up to discover what's inside. And it is precisely this curiosity that Annarel aspires to. In his works, small windows reveal what is underneath: laminate, wrapping paper, textiles, adhesive tape. “I conceal their history”, says Annarel, who also introduces contrasts in his use of paint: alternating a completely rough texture with small irregularities, like a subtle, almost inaudible rhythm. He draws inspiration from the ordinary everyday: the rhythm of the pattern of a kitchen towel, a catalogue, a logo, a well-known motif. His deep, generous colours make you forget the material quickly: they are gateways to an emotion, an atmosphere, a layer deep within yourself, where you might find something unexpected.

(De Wael 15)

Wim Biewenga

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 12 Oeuvres disponibles

8 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

In his earlier work, Wim Biewenga (1939, NL) started from a story, an incident, a memory or landscape. Gradually he began to long for more clarity, which resulted in abstraction. Narrative horizons gave way to geometry and lines, and the silence, the emptiness, became a necessary element. Biewenga does not hide his quest: the attentive spectator follows along earlier pencil lines and painted over roughening, in order to enter the simplified field of Biewenga's final conclusion as consciously as possible.

What appeals to me in the work, Langs berg en dal 4, is that the title and work of art could just as well represent an inner landscape. It amazes me how hard yellow and unrelenting black can contain such a mild, warm emotion. And the fact that the clean lines are sharply contrasted against the wavering horizon and the unfinished corner at the bottom, makes the panel alive and continues to challenge despite its austerity. Biewenga's silence has also reached me: what has passed fades away, only the lines remain.

(Livingstone gallery)

Gommaar Gilliams

1 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 0 Oeuvres disponibles

0 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 1 Recommandations

Gommaar Gilliams (1982, BE) did his master's degree in painting with compositions of sewn Ikea fabrics. In 2018 he had his first solo exhibition at De Buck Gallery in New York. His oeuvre is still characterized by canvas stitched together, but no longer with an Ikea print but processed with oil paint and oil bars, and sometimes filled in until a bas-relief is created, as in the Blanket Series. Lyrical abstractions accompany figurative elements: animals, plants, female silhouettes, ornaments and battlements. Gilliams' daring is not only expressed in the large, powerful shapes, but even more so in the white spaces that he dares to create. His gallerist, Sofie Van de Velde, calls his works “a pursuit of an idealized world”. The viewer can also discern a marriage of strength and softness, of the rigorous and the poetic. A contrast that continues to fascinate, lure, tickle – like conversations with an exceptional person.

(Sofie Van de Velde Gallery)

Veerle Beckers

0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 47 Oeuvres disponibles

5 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations

It is the light-heartedness, the unpretentious playfulness that attracts me so much in the work of Veerle Beckers (1976, BE). Perhaps because her use of colour – she always seems to have added a bit of grey to the colour scheme – does not exclude the melancholy, so her paintings are not an escape. The layering of her works – the thick, smooth oil paint glaze that reveals traces of underlying layers here and there – provides anchoring. Her images – socks, waves, a bow, geometric shapes – are childishly simple, partially or completely abstract: a cheerful synthesis that makes life manageable (again). “My recent paintings are exercises with paint and form that seek to look at the world in a more concentrated way,”** says the Ghent artist. She bases herself on her own photos or on other people's images, on small traces of history: an old kite, a piece of cloth. “It is the emotion attached to it that I want to capture and display in my canvases.”** And it is that emotion that unites her powers of observation with mine, in a moment of lively attentiveness.

(Kristof De Clercq gallery)

** www.beeld.be/kunstenaars/veerle-beckers