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23/1/2008

Two exhibitions

Dagmar De Pooter Gallery, Antwerp

Yves Beaumont "The private territories"

Contemporary painting is doing very well. When it was pronounced dead due to the storm of conceptualism in the seventies and eighties, the paint, brush and canvas that had been handled for centuries seemed to be on the way to their demise. But we know the rest of the story: the genius of Gerhard Richter, the conceptual approach of Luc Tuymans, as well as a number of other factors, put painting back at the centre of attention. Characteristic for this new generation of painters was their change in attitude: they no longer (only) focused on the tension between lines, colours and fields, between figuration and abstraction, between signs and meanings; they were specifically concerned with the reinterpretation of existing images. These images they got from photographs, videos, clippings, documents and other media to which they added, in a flash of inspiration, the aspect of "concept". They stopped creating individual pieces of art. Instead they painted series, ideas, strands of thought.

Since then, contemporary painting has fragmented and scattered itself in a multitude of directions. The British art dealer and collector Charles Saatchi launched 'The New Painting', phenomena such as the Leipziger Schüle (Neo Rauch, Matthias Weischer and others) emerged and painters such as Johannes Kahrs, Thomas Scheibitz, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jenny Saville, Jonathan Meese, Dan Walsh and many others stormed the international scene, each in their own way. Belgium did not stay behind. A young generation of painters developed their very own thoughts about painting that centered (and still centers) around the idea: where will you take this medium? What do you do with the big picture? Are aesthetics making their return? At this moment the country is full of young, interesting painters who all approach their art, which has apparently refused to die a silent death, in a very individual manner. In this line of contemporary Belgian artists there is nevertheless a number of painters who, while gladly picking up the achievements of the new way of painting, cannot and will not let go of what the past has given them. Much of this can be brought back to the tradition and evolution of landscape painting: since the 'Mont Ste Victoire'-versions of Paul Cézanne and 'Impression: soleil levant' of Claude Monet, but also since the work of Constable and Turner, 'the landscape' in modern art has become a captivating quest, with the radical abstraction of Mondriaan, the perspectives of Spilliaert, the earthiness of the Latem School and the contemporary work of Per Kirkeby and the aforementioned Gerhard Richter.

One of those contemporary Belgian painters at the centre of this quest is Yves Beaumont (Oostende, °1970). Landscapes take a central place in his paintings. He knows and admires the great masters, but has gradually developed his own pictorial language, which, in essence, is "to translate". Beaumont does not just translate the real picture of a landscape, as he sees it, to some proper aesthetical interpretation, but uses what he calls a "pictorial logic": a logic that feels the character of the canvas surface and of the skin of paint, touches and kneads the paint and offers the subject to the viewer in an entirely new form. Thus the painting (or drawing) becomes detached from the actual subject, and therefore independent. Actually Beaumont does what is essential to the art of painting, as opposed to most other forms of visual art: by applying paint and pigment to the canvas he is creating, with hand and spirit, a completely new image. Typical for his work is that he does this figuratively one time, abstractly another - after all, working with a new image is, always, working with artistic freedom. And for Yves Beaumont this freedom is very specific: he looks for innovation in the pictorial language, while respecting the "old" art of painting.

His oeuvre shows a number of 'milestones'. Take, for example, the series 'De Nachtdragers' or 'La nit eterna': 'black' paintings that were created around the idea of nocturnal landscapes. 'Darkness' takes a central place here: not the pure black (a colour he doesn't even use), but the play of minimal light and and maximal darkness, the usage of colour, light and paint ensures that the artist is no longer occupied with a landscape, but with a thorough artistic research into form and balance. In his lighter works Beaumont applies several layers and mixes several hues, always looking for the ideal light, which covers his paintings like a veil. The same can be seen in other series, such as the Iberic and Ardennes landscapes. In the former the sun seems not to appear on, but behind the canvas. In the latter a haze of shadow and darkness predominates. Whether Beaumont is painting a landscape, a forest, a tree or a branch, the figurative element continues to exist, more or less, but unmistakably withdraws itself to make way for all possible forms of light. In the 'Waterlines' series this is taken to the extreme: here one can see the reflections of vegetative forms on the water, the rippling effect of horizontal lines. Yves Beaumont creates imaginations, pregnant with the product of six centuries of painting, but at the same time so concentrated and distilled that they carry a remarkably strong personal signature; the master's hand leading the viewer's gaze to where he wants it: to the world, in a certain place, on a certain day, at a certain hour, with a certain incidence of light and a certain atmosphere. The world of light, the light of the world.
Marc Ruyters 2007

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Cian Quayle "Interzone"

Cian Quayle is an artist, lecturer and writer based in the UK. Photography based installations investigate time, place and memory and incorporate vernacular forms of the medium. Previous work has explored the notion of artist-travel and exile alongside archival strategies of Photoconceptual art practice. Quayle recently curated Transmission at The Arts Gallery, University of the Arts London and lectures in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Chester.

Interzone

The images featured in this exhibition are drawn from two ongoing, parallel series of photographic artworks, which explore the cinematic potential of the urban landscape. These photographic images document everyday spaces of work, retail and leisure, which trace a series of 'micro-journeys' undertaken on foot, by bus and bicycle. The register of these images is 'as found', although a set of formal and social concerns have established themselves as a structure for recognition. The visibility of these spaces is initially rooted in a 'passing glimpse', or has been noted during repeated visits to the same site. This might involve the daily practice of buying a pint of milk, playing a game of pool or going to the laundry.

Formally they operate in two distinct registers in their individual display of similar characteristics: The lighting conditions are usually mixed but predominantly artificially-lit by fluorescent light. As such it is difficult to distinguish whether these locations have been photographed by day or at night. They are also familiar as places of communal use and gathering and as a result are subject to surveillance by CCTV cameras and mirrors. This gaze is returned in the point of view of the camera, which has registered these images in a semi-oblique, perspectival trajectory, which plunges towards an unseen vanishing point. The subject focus or loci within each image is confused in an overwhelming array of visual detail. Perspectival-depth flattens out as abstract form and colour draws the eye across the surface of the picture plane. These images mark a changeover of 'place' to 'space', measured by perspective driven vectors of direction, velocity and time variables, which accentuate a sense of dislocation and out of placeness which could be anywhere.

The colour transparencies are counterpointed by the deep graphic clarity of large black and white photographic prints. These images allude to Roland Barthes notion of the filmic. A vacant overgrown plot provides a point of intersection between inside and outside which introduces the pastoral or an idea of landscape within, or often the kind of spaces found on the periphery or at the edge of the city. Thamesmead Estate in South East London was part of the 1960s utopian Modernist dream built at the edge of Erith Marshes in 1962. This location was also used by Stanley Kubrick in Clockwork Orange (1971) where a vision of the future foreshadows the reality of Thamesmead and other deprived parts of London in the midst of the next phase of redevelopment and regeneration heralded by London's successful Olympic bid. Conversely, close-by to Thamesmead, Maryon Park in Woolwich was where Michelangelo Antonioni filmed Blow Up (1966). Both films follow the trajectory of an elliptical journey by a protagonist who undergoes a psychological transformation but is ultimately returned to the same point of departure. Absence and place, space and movement, sight and vision are not simply illustrated by sight but by the reflexive process of their formation, which generates a set of relations between image, event and representation, author and viewer, original and copy, familiar and unfamiliar. They reference iconic cinematic set-pieces filmed in London or bear the suggestion of opening, establishing and closing shots in cinema. As a series of 'optical artefacts' they form an archive of the mobility of the city and the immersive social experience of lacking a place.

Opening 24 January 2008 6-9 pm

Dagmar De Pooter Gallery
Graaf Van Hoornestraat 6 - Antwerpen
Free admission

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