Artist: Lieven Segers
Exhibition title: Hoera We Leven Nog Hoera Wel Even Nog
Venue: Base-Alpha, Antwerp, Belgium
Date: November 15 – December 22, 2018
Photography: We Document Art, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Base-Alpha, Antwerp
Picked from the day, stolen from the night: “Hooray we’re still alive, Hooray still for a while” at Base-Alpha Gallery by Lieven Segers
“For this project I work with wooden forms that are the playful carriers for the texts that I have picked and stolen from conversations. I shaped them in my studio: words are positioned randomly and I write with my wrong hand in a kind of anti-typeface. I think the most interesting thing is that, in the end, I don’t know where and how the texts from my work have been picked up, but they do form a portrait of what I have seen and how I was facing the world.
The title comes from an old work of mine: “Hoera we leven nog”. By playing with the letters and moving the L I discovered a second sentence, “Hoera wel even nog” that gives a funny but also melancholy view on the first part. The realization that it is going to take a while, felt like a curious starting point, because of melancholy I see the humor. Good humor always has to do with danger, and art also has to do with it. Art is also best if it does not look like art, or does not behave like it, otherwise it is distrustful. Art may not be a safe area, but rather disobedient and contrary. As a creator, I want to stand in the world, attract things that I do not understand and then throw them back into the world in a mutated way “.
(part of a conversation with Sarah Verheyen for 100% EXPO)
