‘Stealing Thunder’

ADELHEID DE WITTE | CAROLE EBTINGER | MARIUS RITIU

(Contact us for a catalog of available works

4 June - 10 July 2022

(Text by Roxane Baeyens)

The idiom ‘stealing (the) thunder’, using someone’s idea to your own advantage or to pre-empt it, stems from a statement made by the disgruntled dramatist John Dennis (1658 - 1734), who saw his invention of a thunder machine (for a failed play of his own) being successfully used in a performance of Macbeth. The machine designed to imitate this wonderful natural phenomenon, brings us to the work of De Witte, Ebtinger and Ritiu, since all three of them look to nature and its astonishing elements as a source of inspiration to emulate and to translate into their own creations.

Adelheid De Witte’s abstract landscapes arose from a research into the effects of light, shadow and colour, as well as from an almost sensible urge to root about deep into the surface of the material. Over the years, her landscapes expanded, eventually to the point where they have evaporated into cloud-like structures and light incursions that project vague memories of objects. Layer upon layer, wet-on-wet, dark layers are alternated with several transparent lighter ones. Vibrating line figures are applied in between and on top, always in one movement. De Witte’s way of working is characterised by a certain form of intuition and is a quest in which she allows herself to be surprised, not only by the rawness of her materials, but also by a generic emptiness and the unpredictable jumble of movement. This often results in alienating, rather opaque works, painted in magical-realistic colours. They are the sort of barren landscapes you get when the earth’s surface is overshadowed by a total eclipse of the sun. And every now and then bright colours light up the dark sky, like a bolt of lightning.

In pigment, ink, pastel and charcoal, Carole Ebtinger pays tribute to the splendour of nature: colourful flowers that grow rampant, blossoming trees, fish wriggling about merrily, wagtails and robins quacking, and the enchanting blue of dusk. Grafted into the tradition of impressionism, with attention to the beauty of the moment, in loose, flat brushstrokes as sweeps that melt into flowers before your eyes, and accompanied by a subtle play of light and colour, she sketches the ‘joie de vivre’ that budding nature carries within itself. However, the first works in the Terres rares series were created after a break-up. Fragments of sentences in which the artist addressed her former lover and their relationship, were translated into works and matching titles (La rose est sans pourquoi, À travers nos rayons, Une couronne de fleurs déposée sur mes épaules). It would become a series that paid tribute to them as a couple. The dry, earthy tones that set the tone at first, were brightened by the sun over time to more colourful variants. Together with the flowers, they were ready for a new beginning, a new life. And in that new life, the eternal return of the creative force of nature and joyful memories of the past unfolded.

Finally, Marius Ritiu is inspired by the unbridled nature that he encounters on his path as a nomad. It was his fascination with rocks that gave rise to his fabulous sculptures in hammered copper, a natural material that has become indispensable to mankind, partly due to its integration into technology. A beautiful example of such copper sculptures is the ongoing series Sisyphus. At various locations around the world, Ritiu had rocky behemoths appear out of nowhere, suddenly thundering from space like meteorites. In 2020, Rock’n Roll appeared in New York’s Socrates Sculpture Park, a towering copper stone in a Costco shopping trolley. Since the beginning of May this year, Rock ‘n Row has been trapped on the stairs of the exhibition hall in the Warande in Turnhout. Like the Sisyphus series, the work Go With The Flood, exhibited in Stealing Thunder, also bears witness to both the creative and all-destructive power of sublime nature and its crushing unpredictability. It is a reminder of the fragility of our human existence and a warning to humble ourselves. The surfboard is supposed to serve as a means of escape from possible natural disasters caused by rising water levels on earth, but the plank covered with rocky structures, will most likely not be of much help. False hope, then! A sneer from the artist to the current world leaders with their endless palaver about measures against climate change.