HANS OP DE BEECK

Following his acclaimed solo exhibition Nocturnal Journey at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck now opens his newest solo exhibition ‘Curiosities, Constellations and Vanishing Points’ at Galerie Krinzinger, presenting a cohesive collection of new sculptures and an animated film. This exhibition consists of two parts: a Wunderkammer and a projection space with Op de Beeck’s latest animation film, entirely based on black-and-white watercolour paintings. The first part of the exhibition resembles a large Wunderkammer, in which references to the dichotomy of culture versus nature are eclectically and anachronistically intertwined, as was the tradition in old cabinets of curiosities. This body of works contains numerous references to fossilised natural elements, animals, mysticism, planetariums, astronomy, early science, oral traditions and imagery as well as allusions to contemporary digital imaging and semantics. Furthermore, through a reflection on human macro-organisms, such as the architectural grids of cities, the artist also -curiously- arrived at what looks like abstract modernist compositions. For the first time Op de Beeck uses both text and kinetic components in some of his sculptural works, such as planetariums rotating on their axis or a life-size crow flying in place. The works in the Wunderkammer section poetically question our relationship to the immensity of the universe, as well as the banal world of everyday life. They play with the classical, existential idea of the ‘memento mori’. Nevertheless, this part of the exhibition also contains light-hearted, playful and ludicrous elements in which the artist takes the liberty of making illogical and absurd leaps through free association.