New edition | Thé van Bergen, 2023

Thé van Bergen | Het voetbad III, 2023
6/15 + 2 AP
unique work, 21 x 29.7 cm, digital print, uniquely worked with oil pastel , on gmund cotton linen cream 300g
Price: 715 euro | 650 euro (members)


From a text by Liene Aerts: ... An announcement for Thé van Bergen (b. 1946, Achterveld, NL) .... striking protagonists are "the house" and "the grave" - the coming and the going - with "the chair", "the table", "the head", "the meeting", "the window", "the garden", "the passer-by", "the village", "the yard", "the farewell" standing between them as some elementary things and movements. Standing for minutes looking at heads behind. Hands dangle between head and feet. Feet trip over each other. Possible starting points or transverse signals. Legs bend out in front of us. On our way home. The artist is direct and fundamental in that which is depicted, and direct and uncompromising in how it ends up on the canvas. Between arrival and departure in his studio, there is sometimes the heater, in the winter months, but always there is the radio to "dash to the rhythm" and the desire for that which he calls "a new experience". His painting is an attempt to "liquidate" that which irritates as spontaneously as possible with that which is at hand; by, say, moving from in one direction perpendicular to the other on the canvas with finger or brush, making a "movement-against movement red-white 3" or a "circular movement clockwise" with stroke or smudge; by working that which was already there off the canvas with one intense gesture, creating the possibility of a new beginning and ultimately an image. See the leg of "the chair" that initially also held "the table" or a stem of a flower and thus "the garden". Or look at the many layers of paint, the rows of years and the recurring motifs to which the works attest. ...

The artist lives and works in Antwerp and Wittimont.



Check out the available works. Number 1 goes to the collection of the Friends of S.M.A.K.