Between a rock and a hard place

ADRIAAN VERWÉE (BE)

SOFIE MIDDERNACHT & MAARTEN ALEXANDER (BE,NL)

ERLEND GRYTBAKK WOLD (NO)

OPENING: Fri. November 30 2018 | 19.00 - 23.00
31/11/2018 - 20/01/2019

ADRIAAN VERWÉE

Adriaan Verwée (BE, 1975) makes objects and installations that are caught in the middle ground between the literal and figural, between construction and image. It is as if that decision is still under consideration, or left hanging in the air. Yet many of Verwée’s objects appear nevertheless to have a specific function, and as a result are an integral part of the here and now. The temporal and spatial character of his work is enhanced through the tension that the artist quite literally puts on his combinations of different objects: by, for example, giving gravity an active role, or by introducing elements that look incomplete or redundant. These elements often seem more like 'remnants'of the picture rather than a true part of it. Additionally an enormous amount of attention is lavished upon certain materials and their relationships. This lends these objects an aesthetic clarity and quality, which in turn appears to completely contradict their suggested functionality. Furthermore, the artist seems to have no intention to create a vanguard image of a possible world, which he then offers in its totality to the gaze of the spectator. He arranges objects in the exhibition space in such a way as to suggest to "take it or leave it". In doing so, Verwée engages the viewer in a spatial and temporal experience. Instead of an art that functions through strong and collective reference frames, an art form is thus generated in larger numbers; yet it is an art form that is always experienced and constructed on the particulier and on the individual level.

SOFIE MIDDERNACHT & MAARTEN ALEXANDER (BE,NL)

Sofie Middernacht (BE, 1985) and Maarten Alexander (NL, 1990) know how to find a perfect balance between form and content. Their series ‘Like Today, But More Like Forever’ focuses on a personal theme, namely the presence of mental and psychological problems in their own lives and that of their loved ones. Middernacht and Alexander use scans of bottles of medication, used to treat the psychoses and schizophrenia of a close relative, collected over a period of five years. Their innovative technique of layering acetate and perspex are used to create the pieces, which resemble having your eyes tested at the ophthalmologist. The distance between the prints, make for an image that can only be seen from a right angle. The vertiginous sensation evoked by the nebulous look fits perfectly with the content of the series. A restrained silence that tells a whole story.

(Based on a translation of a review by Sofie Crabbé published in Belgian contemporary art magazine HART)

Erlend grytbakk Wold (NO)

Erlend Grytbakk Wold’s (NO, 1986) paintings show the very moment where we don’t see clearly or understand anything and ask us to think about what this experience entails. As such, he paints an architectural construction with a mixture of lines and shadows of shapes of a level of thinking he catches us in - a level where we are closer to a reassessment rather than being conscious of the importance of what we see.

The work consists of watercolor paint on unprimed linen before alternately spraying red, yellow and blue paint - the primary colors that became typical for modernism and the Neoplastcism’s ideology for harmony and order - layered on the canvas. The outcome of these colors becomes a brownish mixture. After observing the painting more thoroughly we can clearly distinguish other colors than brown. The result of his paintings are lines and fields of foggy shadows, which alternately appear as they’re emerging from the surface, with a melancholic and dystopian alternative and archaeological look at modernism.

Erlend Grytbakk Wold had his first institutional solo show last year (2017) at Trøndelag Center for Contemporary Art in Trondheim, Norway.