Hans Theys

 

 

 

____________________________

Carla Van Campenhout

 

 

The Realm of Difference

Interview with Hans Theys

 

 

- You bring together works that apparently have little to do with each other, is that the intention?

HT: Indeed. I am very happy that Gallery B gave me the freedom to bring together all the works that I considered appropriate for this exhibition. Their similarities are greater than their differences. They are all well made, they are all personal, and they all spring from a lifelong passion. In the case of Ronald Ophuis, Max Pinckers, and Victoria Parvanova, this is a political involvement that is combined with a specific, personal form and a longing for beauty. Ophuis’s paintings have a radical approach, which makes the depicted as concrete as possible and detaches it from the soaring world of the intangible image. Parvanova’s flat paintings depart from the same superficial world, in which fashion models, YouTube influencers, the adventures of Barbie, colouring books from the nineties, kitsch, icons of so-called high culture, and bimbo-feminism follow or overlap seamlessly. Pinckers devised the manifest use of artificial lighting and staging to show the subjectivity of his documentary photographs.

 

- Some people distinguish different styles or schools in the art world, which they deem incompatible.

HT: Our brain likes to attach meaning to things to better remember or forget them. This makes us forget that things that mean something to us – like a tree for instance – don’t require a meaning to do this. Splitting art into schools and so-called styles is a way of addressing something without really grasping it. The same applies to all manifestations of diversity in nature and art. Some people like to classify them and try to find similarities. Others trust their senses and look for the differences, which are a source of endless pleasure.

 

- Pleasure?

HT: Jorik Dzobava, Kasper Bosmans and Felix Declercq make wonderful paintings that stem from paint and secret dreams. They are craftsmen, obviously. Yet their oeuvres are not alike. That diversity moves me.

 

- Is emotion important to you?

HT: If we're lucky, things move us. As a result, we feel less alone, I believe. We feel the passion of like-minded people, their attention to the unsightly, their energy, their efforts to transcend fear, despondency, and paralysis.

 

- And the sculptors?

HT: Here again we see how different objects, materials and techniques meet in an unexpected way. Laurence Petrone made the first work I have seen with marble and a rope. Kasper De Vos combines modelled shapes with found objects in a way I’ve never encountered. Fran Van Coppenolle creates volumes with textile in the same way as Panamarenko did with steel. Simon Masschelein developed a new way of bringing sculpted stone and wood together with welded steel and glue. We see many personal differences, yet we feel the same passion.

 

- You like difference?

HT: The dream of freedom is revealed by difference. We understand that we are allowed to be different as well. That we may be ourselves, as much as possible.

 

- Would you like to say something about Idris Sevenans’s work?

HT: Sevenans is a genius jack-of-all-trades. Everything flashes through his brain and is inverted, flipped, twisted, and whipped with extra air. It appears that Marcel Broodthaers still lives in Venice, a hundred years old, and loves the work of Sevenans. He is even said to have bought two sculptures. The floating archive you see here springs from the current fashion to keep museums afloat with financial support for their archival activities. No one knows whether we need all those archives. We hardly get to see the artworks themselves.

 

- Except here.

HT: I put together as many as I could. Works that move me. Made by artists who have given me breathing space.

 

 

Harsin, 5 February 2023