forever & beyond: a tale about drawings

The gallery is pleased to present you our new exhibition. ‘Forever & Beyond, a tale about drawings’ is a group exhibition that reads as a story about what drawing  means for the different artists shown here: a selection of Belgian and international artists who show historical and new work.

By Jan Fabre, a rare oeuvre from 1983 is shown, consisting of 14 poetry drawings. ‘Gita, as blue is’ is Fabre’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu religious script. For Jan Fabre, drawings are not merely studies, but crucial working hours which inaugurate a new period in his work each time anew. ‘Gita’ is a key work amidst his blue works, it is made with blue watercolor and conveys the spiritual experience of the book to the viewer.

Guillaume Bijl shows 8 drawings: never-before-seen designs and preliminary studies for installations amongst which the 3 original design sketches for ‘Hundesalon Bobby’, made for the last Manifesta in Zurich, and a design sketch with technical drawing for his ‘Archaeological Site’ for Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2007. Bijl’s sketches offer a unique insight into his beautifully poetic naivety that results in an extremely perfectionist new reality.

Koen Theys’ pencil and watercolor drawings are designs for his video installations such as ‘Serial Drummer Girls’, but also for projects in progress, such as ‘The Kalinka Carousel’ in Russia and ‘My Dragon Brother’ in China. The most endearing work of the exhibition is probably the small work ‘La Liberté prende une pause’ from 2014. The well-known French symbol of freedom, the woman with a banner, is seen resting. A high-profile drawing in the current political and societal landscape can cover many topics: in times of uncertainty countries and citizens look for their identity.

The Spanish artist Javier Pérez shows work for the first time in the gallery, the start of a new collaboration that we enter into with this established artist. Since recently, Pérez has been working on this new series of drawings to be included in multiple foreign exhibitions. ‘LAPSUS’ is an ink work on paper, difficult to call it a drawing: it’s the result of a spiritual experience of making the same movement for 7 hours straight, the outcome is always unpredictable, a mistake (lapse) perhaps.

Georg Baselitz shows us a new way of looking, a new vision. The 3 drawings made in 1978, 1981 and 1982, are from the most important period in the life of this legendary artist. The reverse drawing attracts the attention of the viewer and forces him to literally look differently. The topics become secondary here to the expression and style that Baselitz considers.

The two works by Wim Delvoye can be called historical as they’ve become part of our Belgian art history. His two most appealing projects are explained here. One ‘Study for Cloaca # 148’, for his eponymous cloacamachine and one ‘Tattoo Drawing: Beyond – Forever’, a study for a later project where he tattood drawings onto pigs. It shows the artist’s imagination and virtuosity in confronting taboos and looking for a complete confrontation with the viewer and his embarrassing situations.