Titled after the Bob Dylan song, this double-exhibition which spans the two galleries of Sofie Van de Velde (South and New South), asks us to leave the matter behind us. The exhibition shows abstract works, artists fitting in a more minimal, still, and conceptual thinking; and figurative narrative works on the other hand. A “non-discussion”, as Sofie Van de Velde calls the tension between figuration and abstraction. Dylan sings that the relationship is over, and his former love doesn’t need to look back to what was but notice what is present. Similarly, the exhibition pleads for the devaluation of binary thinking in art. You’ll see how some artists could’ve fit in the other group, which emphasises the absurdity of the categorisation.
A friend tells me that figuration is a sort of abstraction. That to abstract is to cut something away, to cut determinators — determinations. We speak of abstraction, but nobody has ever seen one.[1] With a focus on lived experience and a celebration of being multifaceted, a chair is not merely a chair[2] and a square is also a figure.
Artists and artworks alike, toy with their own identification in a process of scraping, washing, gesturing. Renowned artist, writer, and curator Amy Sillman[3] puts it well, “the feeling in your gut as you turn away from the news and gaze downward in anguish at your own paunch. ... That is how I have always thought of abstract art in general: the bandaging together of critical thinking and not-quite- knowing, the intimate labor of form that stays close to the body.” I think this applies to most art, however figurative its shapes, bodies, landscapes, colours, objects.
It’s a language of form[4]. Guy Mees’ Imaginary Ballet, questions depth and depiction, as it makes colourful elements cut out of different materials, dance on the background of the white gallery wall, as we pause to look. Charlotte Posenenske’s galvanized iron Square Transition Tubes, an endless and modular edition, questions democratic conceptions of material, production, and authorship. Much like a passage, they remind us of ventilation parts and were a first step away from a painterly practice. Her blue convex and concave aluminum sheets, seem to overlay the viewing experience of a sculpture and a painting, as colour, light, and space continuously dialogue and change. Of Roger Raveel there is a piece that shows little scratched ink lines on paper, and washes of white cover paint, that hover like a bush over a patch of grass. The two other works are titled ‘A saturated square in perspectival space’, ‘Things and perspective, graphic and tonal.’[5]
Maybe these artists’ endeavours also encompass many artworks by the extensive list of artists in this exhibition; convex and concave shapes and allusions, sensitive to light and surroundings, clouded and coloured by feelings, changed in temperature. Engaged, lively, bodies and vibrant matter, ‘Supervery Snapshot’[6] or messily, neatly, skillfully depicted solitude, creations of real and phantom companions.
Make sure to visit both spaces, and don’t think twice, it’s all right.
Text by Céline Mathieu
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[1] Phrase from the essay ‘Torture Concrete, Jean-Luc Moulène and the Protocol of Abstraction’, by Reza Negarestani – recommended by aforementioned friend Adriano Wilfert Jensen
[2] Cfr. to ‘One and Three Chairs’, a conceptual installation by Joseph Kosuth
[3] Thanks to exhibiting artist Natasja Mabesoone and our endless back-and-forths for bringing her up
[4] Source unknown, but the story went that as they tried to make sense of what a young art student was doing, the teacher encouraged them saying; “it’s a language of form”.
[5] All these are titles of works by Roger Raveel
[6] Title by a work by Max Pinckers
Showcased artists: Bernd Lohus, Catherina Dhaen, Charlotte Posenenske, Christopher Colm Morrin, Ellsworth Kelly, Guy Mees, Ilse D'Hollander, Ives Maes, Johanna von Monkiewitsch, Judith Geerts, Kees Goudzwaard, Leon Vranken, Natasja Mabesoone, Perry Roberts, Roger Raveel, Sara Sizer, Stef Driesen, Willy De Sauter