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The work of Peter Hulsmans investigates the relation with the viewer. It wants to make the elusive elements in this relationship, such as emotions and thoughts, visible. Hulsmans plays consciously with our viewing behaviour and anticipates in an explicit way how the viewer will respond. At the same time the work can be described, according to literary scholar Noël Reumkens as holding back, evasive, scarce, and fragile. Reumkens uses the phrase ‘lessness’ as the work seems to explicitly lack something. Not only in a semantic way but literally, namely physical weight. This lessness, this minimalism, is not meant to add a cultural or artistic value, but exactly to question the expectations of the viewer. The question is not how an art work is supposed to look, but how it manifests itself.

A similar restraint and asceticism can be detected in the work of Maria Gabriëlle although her interpretation is rather more sensitive. Where Hulsmans plays a visual game with the viewer, Gabriëlle wants to create a pictorial poetics. She composes work with ephemeral materials that create an independent micro cosmos.

(From the press release by Danielle Buyssens)

Gallery Praetoria is a non-profit organisation for the arts in Antwerp, specifically focussing on the work of Belgian artists.

The exhibition opens today and runs until 4 March 2018

Praetoria vzw
Pretoriastraat 38
2600 Berchem/Antwerp

Sat-Sun 2-6pm and by appointment

Contact:
Chris Meulemans – Laurence Plumier – Danielle Buyssens
E-mail:
infochrismeulemans@telenet.be
plumierlaurence@gmail.com
danielle.buyssens@telenet.be