Hans Vandekerckhove - Recent works

Hans Vandekerckhove stands alone in contemporary painting, his art being a result of introspective concentration and evolution rather than a reaction on existing styles or trends.
Hence a completely unique artistic language, resulting from a highly personal stilistic research and based on philosophical experience and intelligent romanticism. In recent years, the artist’s style has developed, and matured into a highly personal and recognisable language.

Ludion recently presented a monography on Hans Vandekerckhove, My head is my only home, in which author and free-lance curator Dieter Roelstraete (ao. Mu ka Antwerp) investigates the style Hans Vandekerckhove developed during the last ten years.
For this occasion, director Philippe Van Cauteren of the museum for contemporary art in Ghent, SMAK, personally selected a body of works for a solo presentation at the museum, which was on display from the beginning of June until mid August this summer.

The Fundacion Carlos de Amberes in Madrid will host a double show with works by Hans Vandekerckhove and Juan Muñoz, entitled A blind view: coincidences between the work of Juan Munoz and Hans Vandekerckhove, opening on 20 September 2007 and curated by chief curator Catherine Geens.
With this solo-show, Deweer Art Gallery brings an additional presentation that tries to illustrate some aspects in the artist’s latest work.

A canvas by Hans was often either based on poetical imagination and therefor highly symbolical, or taken directly from existing images and therefor less spiritual.
This exhibition contains a couple of works that seem to illustrate an ever more apparent and more thorough merger of these two aspects in Hans Vandekerckhove’s work: highly symbolical scenery and realistic imagery based on stills or photographs are combined in most of the works.
Even if one can argue that both aspects have always been present, there seems to be a tendency towards a kind of spiritual realism, instead of direct symbolism. Sometimes the artist seems to imbue reality itself with a spiritual atmosphere. Or he finds spirituality directly in the surroundings and persons he observes and photographs.

The artist himself already mentioned some changes in his approach. The symbolical works were usually and until recently composed from several different images, which were then rearranged into a composition which was again adapted and reworked in a slow and painstaking process. Now he more often works on the basis of one single image, which is, however, rarely to be found: an image in which the spiritual is contained. As a consequence of that, the works are more directly related to the experiences, thoughts and feelings of the artist during his wanderings.

pressfile
(image above: Hans Vandekerckhove, Shimmerbright, 2006, oil on canvas, 125×100 cm)