"After Nature"

Marcel Berlanger - Ane Graff - Frank Halmans - Heske de Vries - Pieter Vanden Broecke

15/11 – 28/12/2008

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Is a title than can be read in the sense that the German writer Sebald has accredited it in his oeuvre: ‘the sources of the catastrophic imagination, the continuities between human nature and nature, and the inexorable interweaving, within both, of desire and destruction, pattern and chaos, proliferation and decay.’ One of his most famous works is the lengthy, elaborate poem “After Nature”, which consists of three parts. Of course, the title can be translated literally as “towards nature”, a term that makes reference to the principles of the Beautiful Arts and “After Nature” was also the name of a group of painters from Amsterdam who were active during the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties and that, above all , revolted against the conceptual art and the abstract expressionism. They were against too many theories and wanted to defeat freedom again in order to paint realistic pictures that were understandable for everybody in the way of the German “new savages”. The title may also be interpreted to describe painting “like nature”, an attitude whereby one uses sources like photographs and sketches together with the recollection of the subject.

The contemporary imagination of the nature and of the landscape in the art reflects the changed attitude of the individual towards his environment. Some years ago, Marcel Berlanger glanced through a book with all Mont St-Victoire paintings of Paul Cézanne. In this book, a photograph is printed below each painting. Cézanne has manufactured the paintings “en plein nature”. A photographer has photographed each painted piece of landscape a number of years after this date. The paintings appear to be precise beyond belief, but here and there, Cézanne also adds elements, he closes the composition. When Berlanger manufactures pictures of the mountain, he handles it more photographical, but he also adds elements. He has taken pictures of all kinds of landscape elements in the neighbourhood of the Mont St-Victoire. When a branch appears in the painting that lacks in the picture, he adds it, employing the photographical material. Sometimes he reproduces the composition accurately to the example of Cézanne, other times he tries out different compositions. As such, he makes reproductions (his paintings) of reproductions (the ilustrations in the book) of reproductions (Cézanne’s pictures and photographs).

Frank Maes

The motifs of Marcel Berlanger are easy to read: a snake, chains, tree, agaves, owls, portraits - but nevertheless they seem to be remote to the viewer. Berlanger is creating a platonic cosmos with striking icons. He is fascinated by the mathematical structure of nature. In opposite to the precise construction scheme of nature stands the wildness of its creatures.

Ane Graff

The two drawings by Ane Graff (°1974, NO) show an ambiguity in dealing with the relationship between the natural and the artificial and a clear interest in the still life as a genre and the scientific principle of verification. The eerie precision leaves the viewer uncertain as to what extent these simple tableaux of stones and natural shapes have been manipulated. They seem to balance in between a positivist scientific approach and scenographic arrangements; as with the 17th century 'Wunderkammer' and the 'diorama' of natural history museums. In both drawings Graff captures transgressions of form, blurring the boundaries between static and dynamic material in nature.

At the heart of her work is the poetics of scientific research. Having previously taken an interest in the 17th century 'Wunderkammer' – investigating the space between the factual and the fictional. Graff's drawings portray the prosaic procedures of scientific research. Entirely derived from existent media – mainly gathered from university web sites – her three meticulously executed drawings present us with basic acts of measuring, dissecting and documenting. Nowhere can the scientists or students involved be seen. Rather, Graff's drawings concentrate on the instruments applied and the traces of the various procedures. These are the matters of fact. However, these documentary photographs – now turned drawings – appear as more than mere rational conclusions. Present is also a triumphant belief in observational evidence, and a commitment to a positivism doubtlessly stating that the world and its phenomenons can be understood through collection, observation and verification.

One critic in Norway wrote that my sculptures and photographies are a clear part of my drawing practice. I was very happy about that, because that is the way I feel too. I feel I am working with 'drawing in an expanded field'. "I grew up in the countryside, actually next to the Oslo Fjord. We had a large garden and I always spent lots of time there. So it must have influenced me somehow. I guess the Norwegian scenery is known for its neutral grey/ bluish hues and its serenity. The "soul" of the Norwegian people is said to be quite melancholic and reserved. So I guess that would describe a lot of the art as well. I think Scandinavian art in general is known for its simplicity, its neutral colour-scheme and its willingness to work in a theoretical manner. Ideas before expression, reserve before feeling." “At the core of my work is the poetics of scientific research. My work is an investigation into the nature of matter itself. I examine the surface and structure of organic mass such as bird wings, grass, trees and rocks. In the course of my practice I have widened my range of medias, adding both sculptures and photographic works to my signature-style, highly detailed pencil drawings. Despite their formal differences these works share a clear interest in the still life as a genre and the scientific principle of verification. Present in my work is a belief in observational evidence, and a commitment to a positivism which doubtlessly states that the world and its phenomena can be understood through collection, observation and verification.”

Frank Halmans

By Frank Halmans (°1963, NL) a number of drawings are displayed on which he has drawn the cabinet drawers of his collection of insects on true scale. Halmans: “I started collecting in 1993, and in the meanwhile it consists of more than 2,200 insects. Most insects have been found in windowsills, in the corners of showcases and on paths and roads during walks and journeys.

The found insects are prepared and are given a number that corresponds with a card on which data such as species, family, gender and place of finding and time of finding are noted. The drawings of the cabinet drawers are a snapshot in time. The arrangement of the drawers changes constantly because new copies are being added or because copies are moved to another drawer, due to a lack of space. This is the reason why various drawings of the same drawer are made, of which small details differ.

Between waking and sleeping, between looking and averting the gaze, one finds a place of shades, of semi-somnolent stares, dreams, and musings. It is a frontier where firm and fast definitions lose their certainty, or their value as signposts. The attention shifts itself from the concrete outer world to an inner one: ones thoughts descend into solipsistic concentration. These places of transition play an important role in my work. I'm interested in transitional spaces and objects, like windowsills and waiting rooms. But also in rituals of ingress and egress like the wiping of feet upon entering, and the inspection of appearance and combing of hair before leaving. I want with my work to create places which have the effect of intensifying these rituals.

Heske de Vries

Heske de Vries (°1954, NL) makes small size drawings and paintings that are to be read and viewed as pages from a diary, wherein the artist has registered and imagined events, places and impressions.  These do not only refer to the presentation of recent experiences but also the ones from memories and associations from a further past.

Her topics are strikingly ordinary and everyday. Still lifes and landscapes are a recurrent theme in her work and they are also subjects that everyone can relate to. 

Additionally, we opted to show a number of her works that sketch a less harmonious image of the world and show us a more chaotic environment but are in a way perhaps more familiar to us than the idyll of the romantic landscape.  Garbage lying about or media pictures of an accident also belong to our everyday reality.

Heske de Vries draws and paints everyday things as if it were containers of emotions that can bring back her former or elsewhere felt experiences again.  Her work looks familiar and trusted to the spectator but appears to be very personal at the same time.  She states : “Contemporary things that are dominant or, on the other hand, silently present and that I observe and explore.  What matters to me are the substantive aspects that the everyday things bring forward and that I try to express by adjusting my way of painting to what it should mean to me.  In other words, not everything should be painted in the same way, each topic dictates, in a way of speaking, his own way of painting. “

In every drawing or small painting, we see how the movements of the brush are placed around the motif of the image. That’s where its articulation begins as well. It happens in a very circumspect manner — partly because, not infrequently, there exists a certain ambiguity as to what the motif actually is. Is this a volume of some object, or its outline in fact, or when several objects are involved (in a scene) mainly the intervening spaces or even the shadows cast by the objects?

When I look at, and nose about in, the work of Heske de Vries, I see (basically as a manual constant) how the motif is gradually and carefully touched on and explored by the handwriting itself — and by the motion of that manual process. A motif is, in principle, a motionless object (a vase of flowers on a table, a close-up of a floral dress) but there is always suggestive space around it, in all directions. And the brush moves in that space, giving rise to form and colour. 

Rudi Fuchs

Pieter Vanden Broecke

Pieter Vanden Broecke (°1981, B) is a graphic artist. His still young oeuvre is completely constructed around the intimate relation with marker, pen, needle and paper background of the black-and-white picture that results from all of this. The landscape is his source of inspiration. The physical experience of nature is of the utmost importance.

The landscapes are clearly recognisable in his earlier drawings and sketches : the line of the horizon and the suggestion of the unlimited dominate the picture. In other works, an element of nature takes a central position : a sunflower, a tree, a branch. It is clear that Vanden Broecke is an artist who goes into nature, who documents the experience of being outdoor in that nature that he physically encounters, by taking pictures and by sketching, by making notes. For the artist, it is more a process of asceticism than acquisition. In the protected environment of the studio, those notes are scratched into varnish on a copper or zinc plate, after nature. Afterwards, the plate is treated in a crafty manner until the image reveals itself after a labour-intensive printing process. It is a development that goes from the periphery to the centre. An evolution of unravelling and disposing, of developing and revealing. During the process of the registering and the sensing of the representation of the infinite of the landscape inside the limitation of the paper and the outlining, a conflict occurs : there is no real connection between the beginning and the end. It is like a airplane travel : outside the plane, an enormous mass of energy builds up. The passengers are not aware of this. Their notion of space and time is in no relation to the reality outside the plane. Inside the plane, nothing happens, one waits until the destination is reached. In his recent works, the landscape is reduced to an abstract texture or should we rather say that the landscape is now being developed to its essence. The appearance is peeled off and the core glows in a balance of order and chaos.

The model for Vanden Broecke’s etchings is nature. Nature is a familiar environment for him, where he finds the time and quietness to focus on the landscape that stretches out in front of him. His landscapes grow and ‘develop’ from what is initially a representation, into a highly individual interpretation.

The fact that the technique, the etching plate and the paper are limited, acts as a stimulus to circumventing them. How can a horizon with neither a beginning nor end, nevertheless be transferred to paper? For the artist it is a quest, a journey that gradually takes the form of a transformation of the horizontal line into an image where the horizon is barely discernible.