11.09. – 08.10.2016

Opening:
10.09.2016 16:00

It is all about finding the right compromise between what is there before our eyes and the state into which nature is about to transform the object, or already has done. To work means to create the preconditions for communication between one’s ability and incapacity. You come to own these things and sacrifice them once again. I tend to work fairly traditionally in general. This has less to do with the materials and techniques I employ than with the fact that I always have a plan: a plan that is a result of spatial thought. I don’t need that plan for the creation of a good sculpture but rather to allow the unexpected to take place. A role is being rehearsed and during that process a space is being defined – a dead angle, a blind spot, a black hole – in which this role can be sacrificed and the sculpture come into being. Just like irregularity unmistakeably gives shape to a potato, it also makes sculpture happen: outside the system, self-reliant and unpredictable, consistently inconsistent. You encounter a piece of wood: it is empty. It does not ask for anything, it is self-sufficient – it is precisely what it is. Something concrete is standing in the space and you never intended it to be that way. It does not ask for affirmation but that’s exactly what you give. The sculptor affirms. (MVR)

​Kevin Spacey is representative of a character, a protagonist, a role being enacted or toyed with; or also the space in which something is taking place and which denotes the current ‘blind spot’ of sculptor Maarten Van Roy (1985, Bonheiden/Belgium). Based on the premise that there is nothing in existence but reality and that this reality is being sublimated inside the exhibition space, the artist is forced to find new strategies over and over again to confront the viewer with the here and now. The presence of the construct that is Kevin Spacey is founded on the tension between its place and the battle that is raging between the sensual physicality and the motifs of Van Roy’s practice. Works from different periods appear together before the visitor and contribute to the (re-)staging and confirmation of a place through their presence.

Alongside his regular practice Maarten Van Roy has been working on at times highly personal, novel-like notebooks in recent years. In these books he experiments with different pictorial languages and characters; buffing up in that space-material-motive gym with drawings, paintings, fragments of texts and collages. On the occasion of this exhibition Strzelecki Books have published a facsimile edition of one of these books with the support of Kunststiftung NRW. Maarten Van Roy – 2015.2 (Edition of 250, signed and numbered)

A Montaigne quote is found in the volume’s imprint:We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.

We look forward to seeing you and your shapelessness!