Every year, Coppejans Gallery gives carte blanche to an external curator under the banner “be my guest”. Based on their personal vision of the gallery's identity, they create a unique exhibition. For this edition, art historian and author Antoon Melissen selected work by three artists who each resonate with the spirit of the gallery in their own way.
___________________________________________________________________________
À la recherche du temps perdu (Antoon Melissen)
For more than two decades, Tilburg artist Ine Vermee (1954) has been exploring the visual qualities of light and the apparent neutrality of the “non-colour” white. Her research into white, light and material unmistakably evokes associations with minimalism and the European ZERO movement.
And yet such an association is too limiting. Whereas minimalist tendencies are often associated with distance and coolness, Vermee's works invite closeness and receptivity. Meaning does not arise in advance here, but unfolds in the act of viewing itself – in a personal, inspired relationship with the artwork.
In the passing of the hours, in the ever-changing intensity of the light, lies the allure of “her” white; in lost time, lingering in a sensual monochrome. The tradition of minimalism may lie dormant in her work, but it is its contemporary expressiveness that gives it its relevance.
From the early 1960s onwards, Theo Niermeijer (1940–2005) made a name for himself with sculptures made of metal and sheet steel. Poet Simon Vinkenoog characterised his friend as an ‘iron poet’. And indeed, Niermeijer had a keen eye for the “poetic residue” of our industrial society, for what can be found in shipyards and landfills.
Niermeijer's earliest works exude the spirit of the 1960s, of rebellion and creative adventure. “We gratefully make use of whatever comes to hand,” according to a manifesto co-signed by Niermeijer in 1962: 'Asphalt is better than Talens, iron better than bronze.'
The oeuvre of this self-proclaimed “archaeologist of the rubbish heap” moves between a longing for yesterday and the materiality of today. The – desired – oxidation of his sculptures embodies our shared past and the tender beauty of the passing of time.
In a world with an overkill of images, Koen Kievits (1996) explores processes of perception. Which impressions linger, what disappears? His work moves in the twilight zone between transience and eternity, between appearing and disappearing. It shows that meaning arises in transitions: it is precisely when something is erased or let go that it grabs our attention.
These polarities are expressed in his performative work The nature of images (2022-2024), as if in an emblem of modern times. Kievits' “hourglass” gives form to time – an image of slipping away, in which presence and disappearance touch each other.
Organic growth forms and geometry converge here as manifestations of time – and, in the context of this exhibition, build a bridge between Niermeijer and Vermee. But what are we actually seeing? Forms in transition, how the image frees itself from its framework, or perhaps the emptiness that remains – and is that emptiness really empty?
…….
This exhibition takes its title from the monumental novel cycle of the same name by French author Marcel Proust (1871–1922). In À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust shows that the past does not unfold linearly, but can unexpectedly illuminate itself through sensory impressions. It is not the past itself that is central, but the way in which memory and the passage of time shape our identity – that which remains and that which disappears.