I was greeted by this lion carrying a sansevieria, made by Ignace Cami, when I visited the exhibition Stille, stomme getuigen… (Silent, Dumb Witnesses…) at A Gallery Named Sue, to write a review for the Villa La Repubblica blog. The exhibition is part of the show Vormidable, also on show at Lange Voorhout (see pictures here) and Museum Beelden aan Zee, with works by Flemish sculptors.
The works are all very much suited to be shown in the intimate setting of the gallery apartment, like this film installation by Ruben Bellinkx about four turtles who are each tied to a leg of the same table and make the table move, in that way showing a moving sculpture and a special experience of it.
Jonas Vansteenkiste shows the dangers of the security of dream houses and
a heap of houses also seem to be fit to light the fire in the hearth.
Anton Cotteleer (who also showed work in The Hague last year, as you can see here) is well represented in this exhibition, amongst others by this
goose keeper, or rather goose holder which
seems to be falling on a table, dashing all hopes for an agreeable decoration.
An earlier work by Cotteleer is about the dubious kitsch that
embellishes Flemish lives, which he presents in almost postmodern museum-like way.
The intimacy of the gallery strongly adds to the appearance of the works and
even the Karel Appel (a kind of surprise combination the gallery is very good at) on the wall might make you feel at home in an art loving place. But
next to that colourful painting is a building by Vansteenkiste which seems to be multiplying like a diatom and
there are two heads on a table by Cotteleer, decorative and colourful like the painting, or
are they?
Cami uses two sansevieria leaves for a kind of fossilised crusaders’ sword, mixing typically west-European (or Flemish) heraldry with more petty-bourgeois Flemish symbolism.
Passing the jackdaw by Dutch artist Noortje Zijlstra (one of the gallery’s artists) i was leaving this very well arranged and somewhat absurdist exhibition
greeted again by Cami’s failed-heroic Flemish lion and Flemish sansevieria (very Flemish but both deriving from Africa).
(Click on the pictures to enlarge)
See more pictures and the full review (in Dutch) here.
Bertus Pieters
