Frank Taal Gallery presents Tom Woestenborghs and Marilou van Lierop at booth PG 33 - BAD Ghent Belgium 2017
Tom Woestenborghs (1978) obtained his MA painting in Antwerp and in 2005 a postgraduate degree at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts.
His background as a painter is immediately noticeable in his new way of working, in which he builds up his compositions from layers of x-film foil and paper tape on dibond, after which he pours the works with epoxy resin. This totally different approach to the collage creates a new image, with a dynamic between high gloss and the many small, matte color areas.
Works from 'Home is a formal, yet loving place' are shown on BAD. This series functions as a warm nod to the duality that dominates our lives. She considers the conflict between formal representation - which we so much like to use as a shield - and the urge for warmth and deep humanity that we always yearn for.
Portfolio Tom Woestenborghs BAD 2017
Marilou van Lierop (° 1957) paints an elusive, surprising, slightly surreal world. Recognizable and at the same time unfathomable. While painting she explores social and existential phenomena.
She paints the chaos and the helpless man's ways to get a grip on it. Our eyes glide back and forth across the mass scenes and find no peace anywhere. Van Lierop does not guide our gaze. She's not forcing. There is no center, no focus, only calm chaos. In some works, however, she applies white lines as connecting signs between people or between an isolated individual and a crowd. This is how she introduces an order. "But that is a human projection," she says about it. “We want to organize. And then we think that order is the reality. We create things that transcend us - mass, science, religion - and are then afraid of it. "
Van Lierop's work is about the arbitrariness with which people behave and oppose each other - as a mass and as a group - and about our inability to get order in chaos.
Nothing is what it seems. Welcome to the strange universe of Marilou van Lierop.
Text: Eric Rinckhout
Portfolio Marilou van Lierop BADGent 2017