Heartfelt concern for the immediate environment

The first thing to strike us is the heartfelt concern for the immediate environment in all the selected works: for family and ancestors, cultural heritage and landscape. This caring attention does not focus solely on our students’ history, but also the rediscovered humanity of refugees and squatters. Their altruistic stories are intersected by elementary, physical experiences such as dance movements, smells, sound and flashes of light. In concrete terms, this is reflected in photos of living rooms, camera movements around whirling bodies or in a lion sculpture. In others, the experienced energy leaves an intimate impression on ceramic vases, in delicate fabrics and piles of earth and bottles of water.

The exhibition includes a strict selection of both 'autonomous' and 'applied' artists and yet common ground between the participating artists is abundant. Very often we see a striking combination of a strong, personal approach inspired by society and emotional involvement paired with a cognitive curiosity that does not hesitate to question our reality. Vision takes precedence over a medium used with strong expertise. Each and every artist gives meaning to concrete experiences and places them within a broader framework, whether or not by making use of several techniques. Finally, each and all have an affinity for spatiality and which appears in the exhibition, both to the architecture and the viewer, which completes the work.

Ronald Clays & Filip Luyckc, curators