October 24–November 30, 2019
Bram Demunter, Gelatin, Adrian Ghenie, Kati Heck, Friedrich Kunath, Edward Lipski, Jonathan Meese,Tal R, Daniel Richter, Peter Rogiers,Ben Sledsens, Ed Templeton, Henk Visch, Anke Weyer
The paintings and drawings of Bram Demunter (1993 Kortrijk; lives and works in Knokke-Heist) are always an interactive process between things he reads, hears, sees and thinks. With his works he refers to the tradition of art history with references to Gerard David, James Ensor, Henry Darger and Rogier Van der Weyden.
The artist collective Gelatin (living and working in Vienna) is composed of four artists. They met for the first time in 1978 during their participation in a summer camp. Since then they play and work together. One can define their universe as an enormous extravagant chaos. Their work stems from their performances and mainly translates into sculptures.
At first sight Adrian Ghenie’s (1977, Baia-Mare; lives and works in Cluj and Berlin) paintings deal with subjects that carry a historical set of references, but collective memory is constantly challenged by enigmatic prophetic actions, occulted and personal folds in the temporal linearity.
Kati Hecks (1979, Düsseldorf; lives and works in Pulle) masterful virtuosity is unmistakable. She portrays her figures in a photorealistic way with a great attention to every detail. She combines that precision with abstractions and parts that are applied almost sculpturally on canvas.
Friedrich Kunath’s (1974 Chemnitz; lives and works in Los Angeles) work is imbued with ambiguity. His work has been influenced by the culture of wisdom and popular culture, to the point of obsession and sometimes even systematization.
Spirituality and existential discomfort in human existence, and the rituals with which man tries to relate to it, are recurring themes in the work of Edward Lipski (°1966, London; lives and works in London).
Jonathan Meese (1970, Tokyo; lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg) is known for his versatile work, ranging from exuberant paintings, installations, ecstatic performances to a powerful oeuvre of sculptures in various media. All of Meese’s work is driven and supported by the pursuit of the dictatorship of art.
The duality of Tal R’s (1967 Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works in Copenhagen) heritage is recognized in his work, which offers both festive and sinister sensations. His subject is deliberately easy to describe, but meaning is, as in dreams, enigmatic. Tal works with different media (collage, sculpture, installation, painting) and intuitively removes images from different sources.
Daniel Richter (1962, Eutin, Germany; lives and works in Berlin) creates a balance between abstraction and figuration with a combination of highly detained silhouettes and subtle gradations of the background. In his large-scale oil paintings, Richter connects pieces of art history, mass media and pop culture in idiosyncratic, narrative pictorial worlds.
Peter Rogier’s (1967, Antwerp; lives and works in Oud-Heverlee) ironic-expressive sculptures float between abstraction and figuration and combine both excellent craftsmanship and innovative visual language. The work of Peter Rogiers is characterized by numerous contradictions.
Ben Sledsens’s (1991, Antwerp; lives and works in Antwerp) works bear witness to an in-depth knowledge of art history. His palette of strong, vibrant colors, high technical qualities and simple visual language exist within a long tradition that refers to great masters such as Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Henri Rousseau and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Ed Templeton (1972, Garden Grove; lives and works in Huntington Beach) spent his childhood in a world of skateboarding and punk rock music. He described his drawings, photos and paintings based on anecdotes and feelings that give the images a new, more profound interpretation.
With his poetic sculptures, Henk Visch (1950 Eindhoven; lives and works in Eindhoven and Berlin) often manages to evoke all kinds of associations and stimulate the viewer’s fantasy.
Dismantling false dichotomies such as abstraction versus figuration, accident versus intention and confusion versus order, Anke Weyer (1974 Karlsruhe; lives and works in New York) has developed a practice where anything is possible, where confusion is as marvellous as it is treacherous.
