In the existential no-man’s land
In the exhibition “Perist by day to relinquish by night” Ilse Van Roy and Jesse Magee investigate the border between perseverance in the known (the day) and the surrender into the boundlessness of the foreign (the night). They let their artworks communicate and balance on the fragile cord between light and dark. Attracted by the darkness of death, their oeuvre seems hopelessly looking for a glimpse of the infallible. They dig simultaneously into the earth and the sky with bare hands chasing the paradox that if everything matters then that matters nothing really matters.
Their images are metaphors that approach these questions, pushing the viewer towards the point at which the equilibrium is disturbed. They seek to intensify the viewing experience, cause trouble and especially not to please. The viewer is confronted with the unprecedented and unbalanced as attractive counter-poles to a repetitive and fleeting everyday life.
“The last few decades have been marked by a new consciousness, awakened like an elephant in the glass stores of our capitalist society as a result of the global economic and environmental crisis. We are vulnerable, not forever young, not forever pretty, not forever powerful. Nature is fragile, and once the balance is destroyed, it will inevitably hit us back. We awake, nothing is forever. Is life indeed a cycle? Each individual realizes that he is somewhere in that cycle, between that beginning with birth and the end that will surely come but does not reveal its secrets.” Ilse Van Roy
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captions:
in the slider:
Ilse Van Roy | I had to pay justice this enening | 2017 | copyright Ilse Van Roy
in the text:
Jesse Magee | Mutterboden – Line | 2016 | topsoil fired to 1200° C (10 pieces), table | 90x140x40 cm | Photo © Helge Articus
View into the exhibition
Ilse Van Roy | Pieta | 2017 | copyright Ilse Van Roy