Galerie Greta Meert is pleased to present works by **Liam Everett, **Edith Dekyndt, David Claerbout and Pieter Vermeersch at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 alongside a solo Kabinett presentation with Magali Reus' series Settings.
Liam Everett works out of a barn on the spectacular North California coast. Perhaps what one might witness in his work could be seen as analogous to the electrifying molecular, material and pictorial collisions and convergences of those surroundings—his works are fruit of processes of application, erasure and emulsion of paint, sand, inks, alcohols, and caustic substances into abstract compositions of an exhilarating energy and dynamism.
The artist stands above the canvas when he works, literally on the surface, choreographing his way around complex systems of stencils, screens, objects, grills; anything that comes to hand. No mark is made without an obstruction between him and the canvas; I have to reach over or through or up against. Through this choreography Everett's emotions are made visceral - conflicts of temperatures and colours that are an expression of an inner turmoil, peace, or any other universal human complexity.
There are contradictions of depth and texture here, a translucent bloom of vapour might mask a opaque, rust-tainted smudge of dense phosphorescence, microscopic details shift into thick clots of brilliant white paint, colours repel and shift wildly in temperature; a disarming impression of an intangible depth continuously interrupted by multiple planes of intense detail. The viewer is displaced, the floor taken out from under their feet.
To be lived with and looked at is somehow the alchemy of these works. Like the flashes of light they can evoke, the works are of a complexity that dazzles the passing gaze—they invite time.
As the artist himself says, I'm looking for a scenario in which the painting starts functioning in such a way that it establishes its own timing - I'm just moving around it. These sets of problems are based in time.
Liam Everett's work is to be found in major public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France; Fondation Carmignac, Paris, and many others, and has been including in shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Biennale of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium; U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. Everett is the recipient of the SECA Art Award at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017), the Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute (2013) and the San Francisco Artadia Award (2013).
Red Marbles: Pieter Vermeersch deploys painting and adjacent pictorial strategies as instruments to create images that maintain a compound relationship to time, space and matter, thereby oscillating between abstraction and representation. In alluding to the technological eye of the space telescope, the artist continues his exploration of the uncertainties that arise in the act of looking deeper. The geological time crystallised in metamorphic rock is present in a series of painted marble diptychs that evoke abstract landscapes. Painted directly onto the geology of the divided marble slabs, these luminous landscapes, which are also divided in two parts are confronted to the actual surface of the marble, and in turn, they take on a quasi photographic quality. From hyperrealistic abstraction to formless representation, Pieter Vermeersch devises a constant back and forth that reflects our need to simultaneously divide and connect time and space, abstraction and representation.
Silkscreen on stone: In Pieter Vermeersch silkscreened marble, the reality of the material itself and that of its representation are conflated. Rasterised photographic images of the surface of the marble are consecutively silkscreened on top of the surface they depict using the CMYK principle. In this tautological operation, the image dissolves into the material to blur the line between matter and representation— the two central elements of our visual world.
Canvas: Originating from photographic sources, Pieter Vermeersch's work deploys painting as an instrument to create images that perpetually oscillate between abstraction and representation. In scanning the extremities of the medium and its relationship to architecture he looks for the degree zero of an image by exploring how time, space and matter constitute the three main elements. Throughout his work, these elements are mixed with subtle variations as in his colour-graded wall paintings and canvases. Vermeersch's colour gradients are the result of a meticulous and almost mathematical process by which the artist becomes a kind of human printer—blending paint into a smooth and seamless surface he conceals any trace of the labor involved in the making of the painting. Behind their seemingly straightforward appearance, these paintings are the complex condensation of an ancient technique along with the painterly attempt to render the interpretation of a photographic source. Through this complex process, Pieter Vermeersch's paintings liberate themselves from objective referents to allow the viewer to fully experience the effect created by the all-over.
b. 1981, The Hague, The Netherlands
The series Settings (2019–2021) takes the NO PARKING road sign as its starting point. Immediate graphic communication is the architectural essence of road signs: their message is a first and primary function—go this way, stop here, warning: dog. Yet nested into the public sphere over time they accrue fragments of information, contradictory patterns, or surface interventions that open them up to material collage. Like cultural artefacts they are a quiet canvas for a more unhinged type of mark making: the obscure shadow-play of nightlife, globs of bird shit or chewing gum, busted headlamp residue, lost dog pleas, advertising, and pornography. In Settings the toughness of the baked enamel surface has been perverted with process interruptions: the surfaces are sanded, masked, adjusted, airbrushed.
Hung at mirror height, the Settings works read as a type of portraiture: Objects from the genre of domestic melodrama (toothpaste, mouse trap, windscreen wiper) are enshrined behind Perspex in small recessed cavities. Provocatively perfect replicas of their real-life selves, each implies an action—a foaming, a snapping, a killing, an isolating. They amplify the pun of their very existence as signs: take one layer away and beneath it lies yet more language and symbolist instruction.
她的作品系列《設置》(2019-2021年)以"禁止停車"路標為靈感 來源。 路標簡潔明瞭的圖形傳達了其建築特性:指引方向、停車警 示、小心狗等資訊。 隨著時間的流逝,這些標誌逐漸融入公眾視 野,它們不僅承載了原有資訊,還吸附了各種資訊碎片、矛盾圖案 或表面處理,形成了一種物理拼貼。 它們像文化符號一樣,悄然成 為記錄各種標記的載體:夜晚的陰影遊戲、鳥糞、口香糖斑點、破 損車燈痕跡、尋狗啟事、廣告和色情內容等。
在《設置》系列中,堅硬的搪瓷表面經過特殊處理——磨砂、遮 蓋、調整和噴塗,展現了一種新的藝術形態。 這些作品被懸掛在 鏡子高度,彷彿在進行一種肖像式的敘述:牙膏、捕鼠器、雨刷等 家居用品被巧妙地安置在透明玻璃后的小型凹槽中,它們是現實生 活中的完美仿製品,每一個都暗含著某種動作——泡沫、捕捉、清 潔、隔離。 它們以其存在本身為媒介,展示了標誌背後更深層的語 言和象徵含義。
她的作品系列《设置》(2019-2021年)以"禁止停车"路标为灵 感来源。路标简洁明了的图形传达了其建筑特性:指引方向、停车 警示、小心狗等信息。随着时间的流逝,这些标志逐渐融入公众视 野,它们不仅承载了原有信息,还吸附了各种信息碎片、矛盾图案 或表面处理,形成了一种物理拼贴。它们像文化符号一样,悄然成 为记录各种标记的载体:夜晚的阴影游戏、鸟粪、口香糖斑点、破 损车灯痕迹、寻狗启事、广告和色情内容等。
在《设置》系列中,坚硬的搪瓷表面经过特殊处理——磨砂、遮 盖、调整和喷涂,展现了一种新的艺术形态。这些作品被悬挂在镜 子高度,仿佛在进行一种肖像式的叙述:牙膏、捕鼠器、雨刷等家 居用品被巧妙地安置在透明玻璃后的小型凹槽中,它们是现实生活 中的完美仿制品,每一个都暗含着某种动作——泡沫、捕捉、清 洁、隔离。它们以其存在本身为媒介,展示了标志背后更深层的语 言和象征含义。
28–30 March 2024
Vernissage
Wednesday 27 March, 4pm–8pm
Public Days
Thursday 28 March, 2pm–8pm
Friday 29 March, 2pm–8pm
Saturday 30 March, 1pm–7pm
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC)
1 Expo Dr, Wan Chai,
Hong Kong