We are thrilled to announce that there will be a pre-opening of our new gallery IN-DEPENDANCE, during the Antwerp Art Weekend 2024.
We couldn’t be happier with our first exhibition ’Where Silence Meets Me’ by Elizabeth Alderliesten (1972) & Vera van Almen (1986), two talented Dutch artists, who both graduated from the Foto Academie in Amsterdam and who have developed a very personal visual language to explore their inner selves and to embrace silence.
For Elizabeth Alderliesten silence helps her to connect with her authentic self. Vera van Almen seeks out silence to search for something that is not there and to visualise this absence.
‘Where Silence Meets Me’ is an invitation to experience a sense of stillness through Alderliesten’s and Van Almen’s works and to explore our new art space.
Elizabeth Alderliesten will exhibit her series ‘Remember who you once were’ in which she explores the idea of the woman who embraces her authentic self.
The book ‘Women who run with the wolves' by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an American Jungian psychologist and author, who has introduced the concept of the 'Wild Woman’, served as an important source of inspiration. Estés suggests that women, like wolves, have an innate wildness or instinctual nature that is often suppressed or neglected in today's demanding modern society, through upbringing or past experiences. On the other hand, the domesticated aspect represents the societal expectations and constraints imposed on women, shaping them into roles that may stifle their true essence. Alderliesten explores and investigates the complexity of women and their dual nature.
To Alderliesten personally, the ability to adapt, especially in social interactions, represents an ongoing metamorphosis of human existence. Reconnecting with her instinctual nature is a continuous quest; to reveal or conceal, realising that without darkness, there is no light, and vice versa. In her photographs, she uses her subjects to represent these continuous processes of change and adaptation. In an intuitive way Alderliesten collects images on analog film. The negative is her starting point from which she shapes her images. The real interpretation of the image takes place during printing in the darkroom or while manipulating the digitised negative on the screen.
Her work shows an inner journey in which she delves into the depths of personal transformation and self-discovery. She explores the alienation of the self and the challenge of reconnecting with one's original identity.
Vera van Almen’s artworks feel like enigmas of absence, a quest for the intangible, a journey to states of being that she cannot rationally grasp. Her practice is rooted in a profound contemplation of absence and stillness, challenging the conventional notion of being in control by embracing the unexpected results of chance as an integral element of her artistic process.
Moving beyond traditional photography, Van Almen’s practice has evolved from using a camera or Polaroids to camera-less photography, which is a time consuming and physical process that has a meditative effect on her. Her images, devoid of literal representation, resonate with silence and absence, inviting viewers to contemplate the unseen and unknown.
At the heart of her practice lies the conceptual framework of 'What if...', where she navigates the boundaries of the comprehensible to visualise the intangible.
Her book project ’57’, a tribute to her father, serves as a testament to this conceptual exploration. Inspired by the question "Can you miss something you do not know?”, Van Almen started a journey to capture moments with her father, even though she didn't have any tangible memories of him. However, she feels a longing for something she doesn’t know and may never fully comprehend. During a period of 2 years she made 57 pinhole Polaroid images while walking in nature, feeling a connection to her father whom she never knew. Instead of using the Polaroid prints directly, she transferred the leftover emulsion from the peel-apart Polaroid film onto paper, creating an abstract image that mirrors the uncertainty and unknown aspects of her father's life. To Van Almen ’57’ is a personal photo album, capturing the moments she shared with her father during her walks.
Van Almen will also exhibit her horizons and landscape works, which further demonstrates her commitment to the creative process. This involves the precise mixing of chemicals into a light-sensitive emulsion, which she applies to various types of paper, the Van Dyke brown process. She then uses her body, props and other objects to manipulate light and to create her images. This slow and meditative process allows her to tap into a raw emotional force, resulting in captivating, quiet, empty images that carry a deep feeling of absence; unique images of places that do not exist, but are a reflexion of Van Almen’s imagination and inner state of mind.