© Dieter De Lathauwer

ArtWAll grew from Sunday gatherings in the tradition of the ‘salon d'artistes’  but soon became a regular Art Venue.  The ARTWALL mission statement was to connect the online and the offline. In several editions AW tackled different art related topics e.g. in edition 8: the importance of bottom up curating for artistic biodiversity ’ it’s the poetry stupid ’ or in edition 9:  'the important role of the public in supporting emerging artists by buying their  early oeuvre titled: ’ collectables’ . AW 10 is all about collaboration and conversation. BEELDRUIM, a collective of artists at work in the plastic arts (varying from drawing, charcoal, collage up to installation) showed their interest in working with ARTWALL. This led to an intense ‘group curatorial process’ in which the conversation between 2 platforms and on the other hand the conversation between 'a plastic photography’ and other diverse plastic arts became the red thread to follow. AW & BR tried to register convergences, noise, and juxtapositions. For any photographer with more plastic ambitions this type of mixed media group show is very liberating.

© Leen Van Tichelen

CONVERSATION ROOMS, is an exhibition and a temporary collaboration between ARTWALL (art-photography) and BEELDRUIM (plastic arts) which specifically wants to reflect on conversation on a number of levels. First of all on ‘conversation within the exhibition’, the interaction, but as well on ‘the conversation between artists’ while making and justifying their choices for the exhibition, and last but not least; on art criticism. Conversation Rooms dug deep and even seemed to have found inspiration in the proud stuttering of the maybe somewhat forgotten poet Gherasim Luca.  (“Eighty year old Gherasim Luca hurled himself into the river Seine in 1994. His preceding life was all about ‘stutter-poetry’ ; poems which investigate the ultimate borders of communication and turn inward within the process of creation, doubting themselves. If anyone, then he, to show us the vulnerability of expression” ).

© Kevin Vanwonterghem

© Thomas Van Den Berghe

The BEELDRUIM-collective is convinced of the importance of attracting ‘externs’. Collaboration is bound to bring freshness and new angles. “Our collective is one of mainly drawing artists. Peter Waterschoot matched  photographers with our oeuvres  after studying our style and contents. We got together with the shortlisted photographers through social media and/or IRL, together searching the ‘language’ in which to interact.” BEELDRUIM-collective consists of  five artists who exhibit annually for some years now.  Their last pop-up location was very big but for this edition they  wanted something more intimate,  a matching space for the concept.

© Aurore Dal Mas

Sabine Oosterlynck, a performance artist  herself, did the endcurating. Sabine  studied the works of the artists and gave them her full support while preparing for the exhibition.  

Kevin Vanwonterghem vs Peter Waterschoot

Kevin Vanwonterghem’s works are confronted with those of Peter Waterschoot. Kevin says: ‘I love the dark and desolate character of Peter Waterschoot’s pictures, his interest in the forced appearance of things. The unheimlichkeit. I had started new work consisting of ‘layered landscapes’ and intuitively felt the match with Peter’s work. There is still a lot to talk about. I don’t feel like linking or describing or juxtaposing our art, but each has his own story and by bringing them together the work  interacts.  The viewer is free to interpret and to discover the dialogue.’

Leen Van Tichelen vs  Lore Horré

Both Leen Van Tichelen and Lore Horré discovered the same passion for all kinds of different printed papers via internet chats. This physical distance made them need to discover each other on a personal level. The interaction was quite intense.
For Lore Horré, an image really starts ‘moving’  when the images are disconnected from the sheer functioning of the machine. This way she leans more to the plastic arts than to ‘pure’ photography.  For Leen Van Tichelen on the other hand, her studio is her refuge where she can rearrange the world and the stories she comes across. Her freedom lies in cutting and pasting images and rearranging information.

© Nicolas Van Parys

Aurore dal Mas vs Nicolas Van Parys

Aurore Dal Mas’ Polvere is all about desire and fear, with a premonition of disaster. It’s like a dark story with no beginning and no end. All the people and things in these series are temporary figures and forms. It’s a cluster of particles. Slightly blurry and dirty, it’s looking to the side of charcoal drawings. A similar uncanny feeling runs through the ‘collaged paintings’ of Nicolas Van Parys in his recent work revolving around sources and  disappearance.

The work of Boris Eldagsen is all about  losing yourself, from the metaphysical to the erotic.

He photographs at night to explore the limits of depiction. Rather than exploring stories, a place or a person, he hijacks and transforms the external reality, and paints a reality beyond time and space: that of the unconscious. Working in this paradoxical way, people have difficulties in attributing him to a school of photography.
Like Goethe’s Faust, he pursues “whatever holds the world together in its inmost folds” to create pictures that are inaccessible to the rational mind, compelling the viewer to turn to their own memories and feelings.
Without excessive materials or digital effects, he combines the techniques of street and staged photography to create images that sit between painting, film and theatre.

Dieter De Lathauwer  vs  Katelijne De Corte

Dieter De Lathauwer’s projection finds it nature in the tension field of private-public.  Dieter shows us new material he has been working on. It is all about his hometown Gent. He has made  a time document  revolving round the demolition of the old Gent soccer stadium and the building of a new soccer temple. This recent oeuvre is  brought together with the work of Katelijne De Corte. Her fragile work keeps you from stepping in to the projection room. There’s only the opportunity to look in from the outside. The slow moving projected images are signs of our volatile and unsustainable now.

© Harlinde De Mol

Thomas Van Den Berghe vs Harlinde De Mol

Both create art from necessity. Their images are extensions of themselves. Autobiographical. But at the same time timid and scared to be misunderstood, hence very vulnerable. Both work with the feminine body which they represent in  anonymity. Thomas Van Den Berghe often conducts interventions  on his images like folding, cutting, carefully tearing, even carrying the images in his wallet for some time. All processes which eventually result in missing information and a play of lines. Harlinde  De Mol also works with bodies and lines. The lines she uses are marks which seem to ‘box’ the organic structures of the body. 
Both Harlinde and Thomas work as esthetes. Beauty and roughness meet. Thomas doesn’t like talking about his art; “ I communicate through my images”. Also Harlinde states: “The image is my primary language “.

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LINKS
Artwall (page event) 
Belgium