Bastide projects
19 Rue du Chevalier Roze
Jana Cordenier: The beauty I see Stijn Ank: The beauty I feel
September 22 - October 27, 2018
‘The beauty I see, the beauty I feel’
Jana Cordenier and Stijn Ank are an artist couple, not a collaborative artistic duo. Each has their own practice, but as a couple both influence one another. After having worked and lived for several years in Brussels and Berlin, they decided to take time off in the south of France, more specific in the area of the Camargue.
Observing nature is not only about seeing your surroundings but also about experiencing them, or being immersed in them. You feel the wind and the sun, smell the rosemary and thyme, hear the cicadas, you can touch the leaves and flowers. Some leaves appear very close, others at a distance. Everything around you is moving, and so is the moment.
Works become part of that observation when the prepared cotton is put directly on the ground. The surface stays wobbly and uncontrolled because of the plants and stones underneath it. When the canvas is stretched, spots appear and lines are continuing unexpectedly.
These works stem from an attempt to make paintings lighter, or less heavy on matter. Before, I considered oil paint too explicit and too meaningful. Here, in na- ture, to paint is to perform a natural act. It's a direct way of expression without any questions. The struggle here is not about the medium, but it's in the painting itself. (Jana Cordenier)
From the beginning, works seem to be probing into the inaugural instant, or into our distance to the real before it becomes a reality or a ‘world’. The body of work grows with the affirmative questioning of the way a 'stance' operates in that inaugural instant – before we notice anything – up to the moment where we seem to perceive something.
To trace this purity, which is incomplete and therefore perfect, we have to let our senses work, so we can go back to the moment where there is no significan- ce, and when only sense is happening. It is close to nature that one can find the- se moments.
What is created is by no means an object with a meaning, but a nameless thing that can be a sensible catalyst for our senses to get to work. It’s some ‘thing’ that lets us feel the notion of consistency and beauty. (Stijn Ank)
‘The beauty I see, the beauty I feel’ brings together the practices of Jana Cordenier and Stijn Ank. Their constellation elicits a sensitivity that both artists share for their surroun- dings, a sensitivity revealing itself in fragile artworks created through a painstaking pro- cess. Emerging from the relationship with public and space, these works are continuously changing.
Bastide Projects
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