In the past few years, I had the pleasure of observing the work of the Belgian artist Isabel Devos. The last time we met was in Venice on the occasion of her personal exhibition on the island of Murano. An opportunity to admire several pieces from the Contemplative Landscapes series. Of these works, I wrote before in the article Landscape and Sublime. Now, I would like to focus on some recent trajectories that follow up with her recent artist residency in Taiwan. I find that this period has brought a new impetus, and pushed her exploration formally and conceptually to a new extent.

© Isabel Devos, ‘Fuji’, 2020

Her new project leads us to reflect on some cultural aspects prompted by the experience in Asia. The importance of emptiness, or of white, as a diverse interpretation space that alters the centrality of the sign, the gesture typical of Western art. It raises a different level of awareness which somehow questions the authority, superiority, and omnipotence of the artist. The white of the Chinese Taoist tradition that seems to oppose Eastern mysticism like that of Shitao to European hedonism is of great inspiration to Isabel Devos. Just like the work That’s how the light gets in which turns a typical subject of her production (the landscape generated by the action of water on concrete) into its negative. Or again, the work What if white was the dark side in which the search for white as a subject is obtained with the cyanotype technique. As per T’ai Chi T’u tradition, Isabel opposes the principle of Yang (white) with the one of Yin (black), well represented by the artwork on lightbox Errata. Here respecting a vertical vision of the landscape, Isabel is inspired by the rusted surfaces of the doors to represent cloudy skies. A work that once again takes up the vein of the sublimation of the landscape, typical of her early works. A detail of a surface is sufficient to recreate a view (veduta). The landscape is everywhere in Isabel Devos' work.

Shitao, Waterfall on Mount Lu, 1660-1710

© Isabel Devos, ‘That’s how the light gets in’, 2020

© Isabel Devos, ‘What if white was the dark side’ (triptych), 2020

© Isabel Devos, ‘Errata’ lightbox, 2020

Now back to Taiwan. We know how much in Chinese landscape painting, known as "Shan Shui", the mountain represents a fundamental subject. In traditional cosmogony, the mountains are close to heaven, where the immortals dwell. Mortals, on the other hand, are rather insignificant and it is no coincidence that they appear tiny and minorities. The Carrara Crack sculpture is undoubtedly an invitation to reflect on the irreverent human society which instead sees the mountain as a raw material for building and furnishing. Everything is transformed into a consumer good. In the mountain dissected by Isabel, it is evident the intention to recognize the perversion of human action that reduces the cosmos to a utilitarian function.

Section of the painting “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains: Master Wuyong's Scroll”. 1347-1350, Huang Gongwang.  National Palace Museum, Taipei 

© Isabel Devos, ‘Carrara Crack’, 2020'

The work Daily Bread, already in its title, is a denunciation, a transfiguration of the mountain into a loaf ready to satisfy the most elementary needs. The work in some way also dialogues with Taiwanese news by reminding recent governmental decisions to close mines so as not to compromise what remains of the most important regional mountain.

© Isabel Devos, ‘Daily Bread’, 2020

This brief review aims to be a synthesis of the influences of Chinese landscape culture which can be felt in Isabel Devos's most recent works, filtered by the contact with Taiwan. Yet, alongside these, we can also trace the decisive roots in the poetics of Isabel Devos. We find in Nord, Afternoon Spoon, Fuji and Layers the already consolidated techniques of the Belgian artist. The well-known Contemplative Landscapes. With a novelty, the work Grid shows the author's will to intervene on the landscape with a sign that manifests the contradictory domination of humans over nature. The grid is a typical motif of cartography, mapping, and Man's need to subdue, to convert the world. 

© Isabel Devos, ‘Grid’, 2020

This brings us back to a previous work of her Rock Scale which represented precisely this need to reproduce nature at any scale. While at the time Isabel Devos used a reference to the collodium technique and the first naturalistic photographs of the early twentieth century, in Fully Grown, based on the observation of the millenary tradition of Bonsai, she stages on the irreproducible support of the Polaroid the intrusive power within the control of nature, and its growth.

© Isabel Devos, ‘Rock Scale’, 2019

© Isabel Devos, ‘Fully – Grown’, I, 2020 

Isabel Devos' recent work, thus continues on the path of anthroposophical research, questioning how the human species uses nature. However, I see also a need to make human action more visible. For example, some of her artworks take into consideration the scraps of mining activities, such as those of marble. Her works are built on the paradox of the consumption of marble. According to the market materials that present natural cracks are usually discarded. Starting from a block, and its qualitative characteristics, of the variety of motifs ("spots"), marble workers decide the best way to cut it, the pass, and the counter-pass. In general, the market favors the most expensive and clean designs, while underestimating surfaces that present irregular appearance (so-called counter-pass). But Isabel Devos notices the similarity of some natural spots in counter-pass to beautiful abstract landscapes and decides to make fun of the mainstream aesthetic. So she chooses to create a work, Counter-pass, that reproduces a landscape using as a canvas the less suitable side.

© Isabel Devos, ‘Contre Passe’, 2020

Society is at a crossroads, the future is uncertain, and choices must be made. The work Scylla & Charybdis is exemplary in this sense. The work is inspired by mythology. The two cliffs overlooking the Strait of Messina, known since ancient times for the danger they represented for navigation and believed to be the site of two terrible monsters. Charybdis swallows and rejects the water of the sea three times a day, creating gigantic whirlpools, making the sailors shipwreck, Scylla tears and devours the sailors.  A sort of metaphor of the Anthropocene, a period in which we have to go through a risky future. 

Johann Heinrich Füssli, Scylla & Charybdis, 1794-1796

© Isabel Devos, ‘Charybdis & Skylla’, 2019

The desire to manifest and dissent with respect to the utilitarian doctrine is quite evident. Re-embrace a contemplative dimension is not enough, now the vision appears compromised by cuts, grids, frames, by various metaphors of interventions on the landscape. As in the work Naguhe in which a landscape reminiscent of Monet's water lilies is divided into frames. Monet in his house in Giverny, outside Paris, built a scenario as in the Japanese tradition of gardens to set his naturalistic visions and offer the observer the illusion of immersing himself in the landscape. It also contained architectural elements, such as the Japanese bridge. 

© Isabel Devos, ‘Naguhe’, (triptych) 2020

Claude Monet, The Water Lilies – Setting Sun, 1920–26, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

In Spacing, Isabel Devos portrays a landscape starting from the roof of a bridge. She then refrains from placing a rod of the frame on it, which instead rests on the ground. As if to invite us to reflect on the need to change nature. This way I feel she declares the essence of art as a simulacrum of the landscape. We are at a point of discontinuity in the artistic production of Isabel Devos. As if she had placed the brush on the canvas. There are times when artists question their own work. And this is what I see in this latest creation by Isabel Devos.

© Isabel Devos, ‘Spacing’, 2020

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LINKS
Isabel Devos (website)