Ellen De Meutter
12 May - 25 Jun 2011
ELLEN DE MEUTTER
Oost West Thuis Best
12 May - 25 June, 2011
Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition with Ellen De Meutter (Born 1981 in Merksem, Belgium, lives and works in Antwerp).
The uncanny atmosphere of Ellen De Meutter's paintings overshadows the everyday events going on around them. In her new exhibition at Tim Van Laere Gallery "Oost West Thuis Best" De Meutter introduces characteristic Flemish motifs: church towers topped with crosses, weather vanes, suburban-like houses. This "Flemishness" is nothing if not ironic in the sense that De Meutter drives a narrowminded Flemishness to the extreme. Her paintings consist of anti-heroic gestures that aim to document the human, the everyday, the ordinary and in this way not only a narrow-minded Flemishness is put to the extreme but De Meutter places the grand gestures of painting itself in perspective. Painterly elements such as clouds and fruit still lifes find their place next to typical Flemish motifs in a playful way within De Meutter's unordinary iconography.
Many of De Meutter's paintings draw on a personal backstory, even if this remains concealed and kept out of sight. Moreover, a wonderful sense of gravity obscures every feeling of familiarity. In this exhibition De Meutter seems to contemplate her roots and question if home really is the best. Boats who became an essential element in De Meutter's own personal iconography, now appear in her work as a new kind of Noah's Ark, a symbol of transformation.
The snippets of words in her works, investigating the relationship between language and meaning, have previously led to comparisons with Broodthaers. In some of her new works she explores her roots in painting, this becomes clear in stylistic parallels with Brusselmans and Tytgat. Brush strokes charged with color and differences in paint treatment betray opposite states of mind and create a strange painterly tension. As Roel Arkesteijn wrote on her solo exhibition at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens: “One of the remarkable things in the works of Ellen De Meutter is the painterly qualities. The canvases display a large variety in paint treatment and alternate between transparent and paste-like paint surfaces.”
Oost West Thuis Best
12 May - 25 June, 2011
Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition with Ellen De Meutter (Born 1981 in Merksem, Belgium, lives and works in Antwerp).
The uncanny atmosphere of Ellen De Meutter's paintings overshadows the everyday events going on around them. In her new exhibition at Tim Van Laere Gallery "Oost West Thuis Best" De Meutter introduces characteristic Flemish motifs: church towers topped with crosses, weather vanes, suburban-like houses. This "Flemishness" is nothing if not ironic in the sense that De Meutter drives a narrowminded Flemishness to the extreme. Her paintings consist of anti-heroic gestures that aim to document the human, the everyday, the ordinary and in this way not only a narrow-minded Flemishness is put to the extreme but De Meutter places the grand gestures of painting itself in perspective. Painterly elements such as clouds and fruit still lifes find their place next to typical Flemish motifs in a playful way within De Meutter's unordinary iconography.
Many of De Meutter's paintings draw on a personal backstory, even if this remains concealed and kept out of sight. Moreover, a wonderful sense of gravity obscures every feeling of familiarity. In this exhibition De Meutter seems to contemplate her roots and question if home really is the best. Boats who became an essential element in De Meutter's own personal iconography, now appear in her work as a new kind of Noah's Ark, a symbol of transformation.
The snippets of words in her works, investigating the relationship between language and meaning, have previously led to comparisons with Broodthaers. In some of her new works she explores her roots in painting, this becomes clear in stylistic parallels with Brusselmans and Tytgat. Brush strokes charged with color and differences in paint treatment betray opposite states of mind and create a strange painterly tension. As Roel Arkesteijn wrote on her solo exhibition at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens: “One of the remarkable things in the works of Ellen De Meutter is the painterly qualities. The canvases display a large variety in paint treatment and alternate between transparent and paste-like paint surfaces.”