Wandelgids De Meulaenaere & Nagtzaam ENG by Mleuven

ENG

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS DEMEULENAERE AND MARC NAGTZAAM

randomness. For example, the drawings are often roughly cut out, they are all of different sizes, they reveal mistakes or you can see little spots where I sharpened my pencil. The titles of my works also often result from impulse. The sequence of my series drawings is never logical, I find it more interesting to allow a degree of uncertainty and doubt to influence the work so that the series can always be interpreted in a different way.

AT M, YOU WORK TOGETHER IN A DOUBLE EXHIBITION. HOW DID THIS COOPERATION AND INTEREST IN ONE ANOTHER’S WORK ARISE?

Hans : I am especially interested in artists whose work results from the same course or process as mine. The underlying thought process fascinates me and I like to be able to read it in what I see. I first saw Marc’s drawings at one of his exhibitions in Brussels in 2008. To me, there is something both abstract and conceptual, but also recognisable about his work. My attention was especially captured by his drawings that document his own exhibition, how he depicts the exhibition space in this way. Marc Co-operating with other people on my work in the past was mostly limited to preparing publications. While in a certain sense Hans adhered to a strict rationale and process here, I found it interesting both to follow him in that as well as to diverge from it and look for sidetracks. It is important to both of us for two individual voices to be represented in the exhibition through autonomous artworks, but also that these voices are interwoven and guide you through the exhibition. The interesting aspect of co-operation is that one is guided and receives input; that one enters a certain thought process and adopts it while still being free to go in a different direction.

HANS DEMEULENAERE & MARC NAGTZAAM One Show About One Drawing | 06.10.11 >< 05.02.12 SHOW (2ND ATHENS BIENNALE, 2009) 2011 © MARC NAGTZAAM

COULD YOU EXPLAIN THE TITLE ONE SHOW ABOUT ONE DRAWING? WHY DID YOU USE THE PHOTO OF THE EXHIBITION IN ATHENS? COULD IT NOT HAVE BEEN ANOTHER, SIMILAR PHOTO?

Hans We could have used a different photo or photos; a different space. What is important is the scale – the conditions of this space and what emerges from the combination of different photos of the same exhibition space. For me this is also the first time that I have worked based on a space that I have never physically experienced or seen. We used only the images; three perspectives of that exhibition space.

Marc It is a fragment from one of my drawings. In these drawings, I take and copy fragments of text from magazines. This indicates how exhibitions are translated into texts and then into new artworks, as well as vice versa. MARC’S ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS, THEIR PAINTING AND HIS DRAWINGS ARE PRIMARILY MONOCHROME BLACK & WHITE AND HAVE LITTLE COLOUR.

Marc To me, a pencil is the most direct thing with which to draw. It allows you to capture your way of thinking immediately, there is

something immaterial about it and you can easily revise it. The use of certain specific colours often elicits certain associations that I want to avoid. Hans There are subtle shade contrasts in the colour on the walls that are affected by the incidence and intensity of light. Colour would distract from our attempt to play on precisely this perception of things. IN ONE WAY, YOUR DRAWINGS CAN BE CHARACTERISED AS GEOMETRIC, BUT YOU ALSO DEVIATE FROM THAT.

Marc Yes indeed, many things in my drawings appear to be completely fixed and direct. At the same time, however, I play with staged

COAST TO COAST 2011 46,9X36,9 CM © MARC NAGTZAAM

HANS DEMEULENAERE Hans Demeulenaere (Oostende, 1974) is fascinated by architecture. He transforms spaces into models or floor plans, which serve as the basis for the reconstruction of the space. His installations and works are not exact copies of the spaces, but rather new interpretations of them. He meticulously attends to converting the scale or the materials. By combining various interpretations and views of the same space, he creates a new artistic reality. For the construction of his installations, he often uses plasterboard walls, wooden panels and beams.

MARC NAGTZAAM Marc Nagtzaam (Helmond (NL), 1968) makes drawings. For every new series, he starts from abstract architectural elements, graphic design, details of photographs or existing drawings. He reduces these to lines, grids, circles, words and sentences with which he creates detailed compositions and graphic structures. His drawings seldom have colour and are filled with dark graphite. Nagtzaam’s drawings are characterised by the copying and repeating of elements in patterns, which is also an essential part of his modus operandi. References to the architecture of the spaces in which he exhibits are an important part of his work, as are his serial works and the sequence of the drawings

EXHIBITION

TWO WALLS OF ONE SHOW

DRAWINGS

This is an exhibition about ‘exhibiting’: it questions the different elements presented in an exhibition. The concept ‘exhibition’ recurs and is treated in various ways. For example, in the small side room off the long gallery, Hans Demeulenaere has hung a frame in which the letters of the word TENTOONSTELLING (exhibition) can be read in typography that refers to the architectural design of Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld. Marc Nagtzaam presents a series of pencil drawings on paper constructed of fragments of text about exhibitions and aspects of artworks.

At the centre of the exhibition space stand two walls that refer to one of Nagtzaam’s previous exhibitions. Demeulenaere made models of the walls based on two photos of Nagtzaam’s work at the Athens Biennial in 2009. They served as the basis for the reconstruction of the new, monumental walls in M. The two photos, however, were taken from different positions. There were certain specific, determining elements in the photos such as distortion by perspective, cutting the photos themselves, the incidence of light and the textures. As a result, after their reconstruction at M, the two life-size reconstructed walls are not completely identical.

In the long gallery, Demeulenaere presents another interpretation: he unfolds the three walls (the two monumental walls and the wall drawing) and paints them as a long line drawing above one another, each in a different shade of grey. Nagtzaam’s framed drawing in this space is made up of texts that provide a summary of possible exhibitions in the past, present and future. The texts are descriptions of actual exhibition possibilities.

For both artists, there is a route through this exhibition. It starts with how you ascend the stairs, encounter the works, enter the space and move through the exhibition. By making certain elements recur, in addition to various sidetracks, they investigate how, as a visitor, you experience an exhibition space.

INTERACTION In the exhibition, both artists present older works alongside works made especially for the exhibition at M. These new works were made during a creative process in which the artists exchanged material with one another. The constant interaction between the artists resulted in individual works that spring from a shared fascination. Reconstructing exhibition spaces was of central importance. In order to make an entirely new exhibition structure, they started by working on models and photos of an existing exhibition space. Perspective, remodelling, representation and interpretation were the keywords in this creative process. They are given concrete form in spatial structures, drawings, slideshows and monumental artworks on the walls.

Colours The inside walls are painted in light colours that evoke the effects of depth and perspective in the two photos. To the visitor, the play of light in the exhibition space creates a different effect each time. From one angle it appears logical and consistent with the lighting and colours while from a different perspective it causes distortion.

The new monumental structure created is Demeulenaere’s interpretation of Nagtzaam’s photographic documentation, but not a copy of the existing space. The walls have thus become independent sculptures in the exhibition space

Projection On one of the walls, Demeulenaere provides a more profound treatment of the incidence of light and how light makes spaces legible. He does this by projecting different slides on the wooden structure. On another wall, Nagtzaam has drawn a mural – a drawn interpretation of the two photos – in the form of a perspectival pencil drawing.

INTERVIEW Eva Wittocx TEXT Marthy Locht GRAPHIC DESIGN Daneel Bogaerts IMAGE COVER © Hans Demeulenaere - Marc Nagtzaam 2011

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