Teksten > De Zeeberg
"The undulation bulged the water to a weighty mountain.
Thus we could look upon and above the rest of the quiet sea. None of us
-we were all witnesses after all- could resolve the maritime phenomenon
and much less contrive an explanation. Only later would I understand that
we had been too much in awe. Shortly before the event we had been fishing
-what else? - and joking … and in addition there was this rather annoying
eye disorder."
(from: Strandjagers, preambule, p. 3)
De Zeeberg is the third group exhibition in Netwerk2. As was the case with Netwerk2 (2000) and Vlam (2001) the organisers opted for an open and dynamic presentation of new works of art. For the gallery each group exhibition represents an expansion and intensification of its catalogue of contemporary, experimental art. A touchstone and a sample chart for its functioning.
The title refers to Aalst's former brewery Zeeberg. In the thirties Louis Paul Boon used to lacquer beer reservoirs in its cold-storage cellars white while simultaneously drawing and painting his own works of art. Later on the cold-storage cellars would appear in Menuet (1955).
Nineteen artists were selected. People whom the gallery has worked with before alongside some new national and international names. Cardinal to the exhibition is the dynamic, generated by the mutual encounter of the artists and their work. And how this encounter, when forged to a coherent whole, also affects the curious spectator. The exhibition is in fact an investigation in which one is free to experiment. By mutual agreement the appropriate location for an optimal presentation is sought for. Out of the characteristics of each work external and coincidental correlations with other works can or cannot occur. This contextualisation allows the more particular sense of the work to develop its eloquence, which plays a role in the conversations, the discourse. In order to go by this procedure fluently, thematic interpretations are avoided. Thus the danger is averted that a young work yields under the pressure of a conceptual freight.
Both the perception and the reception are very tender. The onset, direction and aim of the course are to be observed accurately. The plastic mode of thinking acquires a certain continuity, a network (sic) and cannot be satisfied by a 'one-idea-one-way-communication'. It is of paramount importance that these new works, which are all part of a specific œuvre, are registered in a catalogue. Netwerk Galerij views such a catalogue as the upshot of its workings: the following up of the dynamic whole in time and space in which and through which the artist develops his vision and œuvre.
Frank Snyders
(translation: Siska Van Daele)
De
Zeeberg
Group exhibition Netwerk Galerij.
05/05/02 > 09/06/02