13:00 - 14:30
Guided tour in S.M.A.K.:
Rose Wylie (b.1934, Hythe, UK) is an internationally renowned figurative painter whose extensive oeuvre is inspired by a wide range of sources including literature, cinema, folklore, mythology and celebrity culture. Fascinated with honest, seemingly naïve expressions, the artist draws from clichéd as well as overlooked visual and narrative traditions. In her large-scale paintings, she effortlessly interweaves her vast knowledge of cultural production with observations and memories that evoke an impartial sense of wonder for everyday life.
Although Wylie’s compositions are immediate and playful, multiple studies often precede the actual paintings. They are underpinned by formal questions that are resolved in candid associations, remarkable scale distortions and unusual viewpoints. This complex pictorial process, in which the observation of the known world leads to the creation of a new one, imbues her precise renderings with a great visual intensity. This exhibition is the first museum presentation of Wylie’s work in Belgium and will include a new series of paintings.
14:30 - 15:00
Coffee break
15:15 - 16:00
Visit to an art space.
16:15 - 17:15
Studio visit:
At first glance, the paintings of Ritsart Gobyn (°1985) appear to be a random collection of traces of a creative process. Paint splashes and smudges cover unprepared pieces of linen, to which all kinds of collage elements such as bits of tape, colourful paper scraps or post-its are attached. Here and there, a fragment of a landscape pops up like a piece from a landscape photo or even from an existing painting. And occasionally the raw linen itself is attached to a white background, in turn becoming a collage element. The temporality of the tape and the non-committal composition of loosely attached snippets and image fragments seem to suggest an unfinishedness. An unfinishedness that confronts the viewer with the creative process a painting goes through before revealing itself to the viewer. The perception tilts, however, when it turns out that the tape and paper shreds and even the folds in the canvas are painted trompe l'oeils. Ritsart Gobyn uses the trompe l'oeil as a visual strategy to make the viewer, through the illusion of a result, aware of the creation process. In this way, trompe l'oeil becomes a searchlight into the artistic process itself rather than a matter of visual illusion and effect, questioning the 'status' of the painting as an image and as an object.
