ARTWALL 5, Ghent, Belgium.
What Renovations and Art might have in common
09.09.2012, Ghent*
*Location = a living room. Toekomststraat 62.9040 Gent.
«If you have ever renovated a house you will certainly be acquinted with the rather prolonged, everstretched period that follows after renovating. The time you should start finishing and painting. But then you start thinking for a very long time about what colour might be the ultimate choice… Let’s face it; procrastination is a fancy word for being a lazy bum.
Nevertheless , being a photographer, it gave me the fantastic opportunity to use these unfinished walls, not only as a a personal working wall, but also as a splendid exhibition formula…! And thus Artwall was born. Artwall shows photography together with graphic work and painting. The friction between them enhaunces the powers of both. Visitors can see immidiately what the works look like in a living room environment, so I hope it might stimulate some people into a ‘start-to-collect-art-passion’.
So yes, I propelled myself into home-curating artwork of fellow artists. Some of them I know very well, some of them I have never ever met. But social media do bring people closer, for a fact! In the pre facebook stone age - a pop up, community supported, non profit , flexible, quick organised , collaborated project like Artwall might have been feasible, but, you would have to put loads of time into contacting and organising before it would get-off. Most people also find it a welcome surplus to the ‘official’ art exhibitions. For the artists it ’s a wonderful opportunity to get feedback, to try out, to confront their work with the work of peers, to get to know people who work in the same field, to exchange ideas, and to share knowledge about the ins and outs on good and bad practises.
The visitors participate as well, it are they who bring on the drinks, (entrance is a bottle of cava, which immidiately gets chilled), the lady of the house bakes some wonderful cakes, and of we go, for a wonderful, entertaining and fascinating sunday afternoon. It is my intention to outroll this concept over other ‘homes in progress’ in Ghent, and who knows, even to other cities…
For the 5th edition we have the following participating artists:
Dieter Debruyne, photographer. Dieter treats us with a cool but melancholic view upon the entrails of public buildings after closing hours. He registers how objects develop their own mute semantics in the seemingly endless time between opening hours.
Nathalie Nys, works very tactile but raw and uncensored as well. She produces a fictitious autobiography, although borders between fact and fiction seem to blur at moments. Her works also widely register from brute to sensous.
Ruben Accou, photographer, he really is ‘the treasures-in the attic-kind of guy’. He rarely leaves his premises (or those of friends) and starts working with clutter, furniture, living rooms and models. The result is shere romance in black in white with an edge.
Goedele Pauwelyn, paintress, allround artist, presents us with a cultivated deceivingly girlish investigation into the most human of desires; namely the quest for personal paradise., aka happiness and beauty.
Maroeska Lavigne, photographer, brings down the temperature and takes us to a white paradise this time, with her warm hearted but ice-cold coloured pictures on Iceland. She has a remarkable talent in touching the inbetween between the documentary and the personal. She works as a real author and masters and moulds the scenery into her own Maroesjkaview.
Isa D’ hondt, paintress, took up painting as a late vocation, but she exercises it which such a hardlabouring vigour and tenacity that it brings up goosebumps when you start thinking about the amount of very refined artwork she has produced in only few recent years. Her paintings are sometimes aerial, sometimes black and heavy, they revolve around how we perceive livingspace and the appearance of buildings.
And also, a few works of myself, Peter Waterschoot, photographer. I have been dwelling in the realms of dystopic and postromantic imagery. My setting are stages, waiting for actors. The photo’s are cast under a black veil and ooze a suffocating athmosphere. Others works are waiting, wrapped for my upcoming show, october 7-28, courtesy of 44 gallery in Bruges».
Peter Waterschoot, August 24th 2012