“Seeing plants means becoming aware of multiple layers of intertwining between species, histories and geographies” — GIOVANNI ALOI, in See All This #30
Anya Janssen's paintings are a celebration of the beauty in the temporary and uncertain of our existence. She is not interested in telling a well-defined story or capturing a passing moment, but in touching the unknowable world hidden behind the sensory perception. In the virtuoso painted surface of her works, she makes tangible an unstable reality in which everything undergoes a continuous metamorphosis. A world that escapes the symbolic order of language, and in which good and evil, flourishing and decay, present and past are not opposites but manifestations of one and the same. A world that shows beauty with the charm of a razor.
The setting for the new works by Louise te Poele is the nature reserve next to her birthplace, the Koolmansdijk in Lievelde. The area she once fled from, but returns after many wanderings. This was mainly farmland. This soil has been excavated so that old, native seeds came to the surface and new 'old' nature has been developed. With her artwork, Louise wants us to look at the world around us with softer eyes, she wants to make us more aware of the beauty that surrounds us and how we could celebrate it even more. She does this by stretching reality to create new forms. She wonders: 'How stretchy is the world really?' According to her, as stretchy and flexible as the mind.
Nikki exposes 'plant' structures in an attempt to better understand the bigger picture through microscopic detail. In her work she tries to match the inventiveness and beauty of nature, an impossible task. Nature is both her companion and competitor. Ultimately, the work is a combination of imagination and observation. Nikki has been photographing those wonderful spots on stones and tree trunks for about 25 years, indicators of air quality and climate change. In her recent work she draws those lichens, symbioses of algae and fungi. She also tests the resilience of nature in the work itself. The long fibers of the paper (lokta and mulberry, for example) enable her to cut the drawings 'to the bone'.