↳ Exhibitions

Koen Delaere at Base-Alpha

March 4, 2021

Artist: Koen Delaere

Exhibition title: Sunspots

Venue: Base-Alpha, Antwerp, Belgium

Date: January 21 – March 6, 2021

Photography: We Document Art, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Base-Alpha, Antwerp

As an adolescent, Koen Delaere drew flyers and posters for performances at the local youth center. He booked bands there and occasionally took on the role of singer in punk bands. While he was studying art in Tilburg, visual art and music kept intersecting. Although music continues to be a driving force nowadays, he has completely committed himself to painting.

Abstract painting has endless potential in terms of materials, methods and expression. Delaere defines his own rules, but then leaves a lot to impulses as well. In each new series, he experiments with how a work can develop. The works in the ‘Sunspots’ exhibition consist of many layers of paint, mixed with acrylic mediums, which are then scraped to two different sides of the canvas (exceptionally also to a single side). Because the paint comes together in a thick wave at the top or bottom of the painting, the works acquire a sculptural dimension.

“I want to create something that is physical: coming from the body and from physicality. A painting as an object that relates to my own body and that of someone else. For myself I call it ‘anti-design’.”
-Koen Delaere

His physical relationship to the work is very important to Delaere. To express oneself physically is a human need: by exercising, by dancing, by playing music. Attending a concert is also a physical (albeit collective) experience. Each painting is primarily a result of the artist’s physical actions. They are not meticulously thought out, or done in a precisely defined sequence; rather they are impulsive and come from a physical consciousness. The body has its own intelligence, which Delaere seeks out. To do this, he has to switch off external stimuli, ratio and language. He previously used to look for triggers, memories of concrete events, as starting points for his work, but now he shuts himself off from them for the benefit of a purely physical strength. In an organized and controlled world, where reason keeps taking over, he consciously wants to preserve his impulsive power.

Delaere works quickly. Painting is his favourite thing to do, and yet a work is usually finished in approximately one and a half hours. He does not work in a dazed flow, but rather in a moment of hyperfocus. A painting is comparable to a punk song: everything there is to say, all the energy, is contained into that singular, brief moment. It will be over in no time, but that’s okay: the work can live on in a new physical relationship, with the viewer.

The paintings may look chaotic – after all, they are full of spots, splashes and strokes – but they are also rhythmic. Their basic rhythm is repeated throughout the exhibition, turning the whole series into a repetitive, visual and physical experience. Like a conjuring dance; not in a trance, but in a purely physical, explosive energetic experience: an action to recharge the body, opening up the physical consciousness. The material is powerfully scraped in two different directions. This opposite movement carries a great amount of tension – tension that leaves room for interpretation. A movement in one direction is a radical fact, an ending. Two opposing movements are the beginning of something: a dialogue, a dance.

Just like his body, Delaere is firmly grounded in reality. He is not the type of artist who waits for an overwhelming inspiration to then create an opus magnum in a stroke of genius. Ideas arise naturally as he goes along. Following the example of Bruce Nauman, he sees a potential in everything – every object, every action.

“What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art… From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.”
-Bruce Nauman

As a principle, the artist is completely free. Delaere sets his own limitations. Within a predetermined set of structural ‘game rules’ he can leave thinking behind. In this manner, he creates a continuous element (for example the scraping of the material to two sides of the canvas) that allows for all possible – free, expressive, impulsive – variables (all layers, colors, strokes and actions before and after the scraping).

Although he never predefines a colour palette, the colours that Delaere uses are always strikingly complementary. Many colours hide in underlying layers, lending a mysterious shimmer to the surface, which is enhanced by the neon paint: to the patient observer the neon splashes, smudges and speckles seem to alternately emerge from the canvas and absorb the gaze.

As he intends to come closer to a physical consciousness, Delaere recently chose to shut off external stimuli and thoughts while working. The artist’s studio is a kind of cell, a self-selected isolation: everything takes place within those four walls. The title ‘Sunspots’ is an extreme contrast to that seclusion. The sun is the ultimate scope: it gives life and light, it is a destination for space travelers and dreamers such as Icarus. Seeing and feeling the sun is the dream of everyone who is trapped, but it can also blind: those who have missed the light for some time, may be staring at the sun just a little too long. That’s when spots start to dance before your eyes – as teeming and sizzling as the neon splashes in Delaere’s new paintings.

Textt and translation Tamara Beheydt, 2021