AMSTERDAM.- In 2009, Hans Op de Beeck exhibited at Rome’s historic Galleria Borghese. In dialogue with the old masters from the collection, he developed six expansive monochrome watercolours. Today, these paintings exist as part of the MAXXI (Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome) permanent collection. Since then, Op de Beeck has worked prolifically on this steadily growing series of watercolours. Though fully matured and autonomous works in their own right, they have evolved into a kind of picture-book, an ever-expanding universe of images that can be seen in a solo exhibition at Galerie Ron Mandos since November 26th, and will continue through December 31st, 2022.

Op de Beeck’s watercolours envisage fictional places - within these spaces dark and fairy-like characters emerge in nocturnal settings. These enigmas elicit a sense of alienation and melancholy, whilst radiating peace and tranquility in equal measure. The figures and places offer seeds for the audience to create a story.

Each of the works is painted at night, alone in a silent studio. Here, without interrup- tion the creative process becomes one of being intoxicated with timelessness. Just as in a dream, the process is one of accessing the subconscious - a ritual of surrender to the unknown. Op de Beeck wrestles with the growing pains and obstacles of the human condition. Here, the futility of man in the face of the sublime and the natural world becomes his point of departure.

In The Secret Place (2022), we see a young girl in a rowboat. Her determined, cryptic gaze speaks volumes as she floats towards a dark place: a densely wooded labyrinth of bare tree trunks. Each boat, canoe, or raft in Op de Beeck’s work is a motif he associates with both decisiveness and surrender to fate.

Op de Beeck often balances the gentle and idyllic with the disturbing and dark. Notions of mystery, the unexplainable and the fundamental loneliness of our existence recur regularly. Alongside, we see other subtly recurring motifs - still lives of banal objects as memento mori; or the micro-poetry of raindrops on water and soap bubbles floating languidly by.




In addition, Op de Beeck’s new water- colours are populated with a variety of earthly animals. The associations we create with them contribute to the overall sense of mysticism. In The White Peacock (2022), this bird of paradise (often depicted in representations of eden) spreads its tail to form a delicate fan. As humans, we are often drawn to empathise and project human emotions on non-human species. For example, in Horse (night time) (2022) we witness the horse’s own melancholy - that of waiting in the limbo of darkness.

The Dark Pond (2022) presents us with an immaculate white water lily floating along. In the darkness below the water’s surface, koi fish swim away from us. Whilst white lilies represent purity and impermanence – the koi fish, known to have the ability to swim upstream – represent courage and perseverance. Both components relate to water, which in Op de Beeck’s visual language stands both literally and figuratively for “reflection”: reflective con- templation, meditation, and rumination.

Besides the watercolours, the exhibi- tion features a number of sculptural works, such as a bas-relief of a seascape (Seascape, 2022) and the elegant hands of a lady placing a laurel wreath on an imaginary head (Gesture (laurel wreath), 2022). As in the watercolours, these sculptures revolve around uni- versal subjects, empathetic actions, and reflections. Essence, according to the artist, lies in attention and devotion to small things and gestures - in contrast to the hollow and spectacular gesture.

Op de Beeck invites you to approach and enter these works through the mind; to
- at first - evoke feelings of recognition, comfort, and calmness. Then, through deeper examination unfurl further layers of meaning and cultural reference.

Hans Op de Beeck produces large installations, sculptures, films, drawings, paintings, photographs, and texts. His work is a reaction on our complex society and the universal questions of meaning and mortality that resonate within it. He regards man as a being who stages the world around him in a tragi-comic way. Above all, Op de Beeck is keen to stimulate the viewers’ senses and invite them to really experience the image. He seeks to create a form of visual action that delivers a moment of wonder, si- lence and introspection.

Hans Op de Beeck was born in Turnhout in 1969. He lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Op de Beeck has shown his work extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world.

Hans Op de Beeck had institutional solo shows at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art of The Hague, The Hague, NL; MUHKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, BE; Centraal Museum, Utrecht, NL; the Galleria Borghese, Rome, IT; the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, DE; Museum Arnhem, Arnhem, NL; Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam, NL, and more recently at The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, RU, and Amos Rex Museum, Helsinki, FI, amongst other. Op de Beeck has participated in numerous group shows at institutions such as The Reina Sofia, Madrid, ES; PS1, New York, NY, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; Het Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, NL; Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, BE; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, NL; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, NL; Tate Modern, London, GB, amongst others.