Unreadiness: Jan Vercruysse, Nel Aerts, John Murphy (Roger Raveel Museum)
Edition of 250 copies
Melanie Deboutte
Roger Raveel Museum, 2023
€24,99
In a similar way, the artists in this exhibition developed their own universe that draws on the private feelings of the author. At the same time, they make use of an art-historical and literary discourse full of iconographic symbols. A number of recurring motifs betray a double meaning: the veil, the curtain or the stage, the mask and the self-portrait, the poetic word choices in the titles. In a sensual game of concealing and revealing, the works of art bear witness to creation itself: “art for its own sake, and for its own destiny”.
The general mood in many of the works is one of melancholy, a feeling of loss and indefinable longing that is difficult to put into words. Like a ship without a course, floating on a vast sea, the artist feels stricken by loneliness and steps up to express these existential questions in the form of a doppelgänger, a character. Watching and being watched go hand in hand. The works in this exhibition seem to exist in another dimension, closed in on themselves, at a distance from the viewer.
Each of the artists questions and tests their preferred medium – sculpture, painting, photography, poetry – in the light of art history, paying attention to its traditions and fault lines. One seeks an aesthetic purity for this, the other attacks it. The encrypted structures of language, meaning and image are exposed, while a great deal of attention is paid to material, carrier, volume in space and formats. A narrative or anecdotal dimension is avoided.
ISBN: 9789040304538
