Ai is Japanese for love. It is a word we use in Dutch when we hurt ourselves and it is A.I.

This is the introduction that artist Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx wrote to announce his second solo show at Otty Park Gallery. The exhibition Ai is a culmination of a two year journey of creating new works, collecting relics and poetic writing, further building upon his previous show - Through My Eyes. Ai is responding to that moment in our lives after the experience of the pandemic, exploring thoughts and feelings in this fast changing world.

Through the word Ai, like the introduction sentence mentions already, Benny explores the multi-layered meaning of the word, which is revealed in different fragments of the exhibition. It is a form of absorbing the world around us, a way of gazing at these fleeting moments which compile the years after the pandemic. Found fragile ephemera reflect this gaze, they are evidence of the volatility and transience, and at the same time lay here, sensible and present. They are remnants of an alertness for found objects and images, which withhold a poetic connection to our environment, exposing the creation in nature which questions our own creation processes, or even subconscious movements, like the wind rearranging the grass or a feather that falls down from the sky and juxtaposes itself on the ground.

Exhibition: 02.06-08.07.2023

Artists: Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx