Fields of Perception

Fields of Perception brings together the work of Greet Billet, Marien Schouten and Stan Van Steendam around a question that cannot be answered in a single image: how do we perceive a work when light, space, matter and our own position are constantly changing?

In Greet Billet’s practice, light becomes more than a condition for seeing. Reflective and transparent materials absorb their surroundings, distort them and return them to the viewer. A movement through the space is enough to reveal a different colour, a new reflection or an unexpected depth. As the light shifts, so does the experience of the work. Billet makes visible just how closely perception is tied to a particular moment and place.

For Marien Schouten, too, the relationship between work and space is central. His practice moves between painting, sculpture and architecture. A striking example is Green Room / Snake, the green ceramic room at Museum De Pont in Tilburg. There, colour becomes a space the visitor enters, and looking becomes a physical experience. Forms and motifs recur throughout his work, yet take on different meanings through their material, scale or placement. Schouten leaves the boundary between image and surroundings open, inviting visitors to explore that relationship for themselves.

For Stan Van Steendam, this exploration begins with the materiality of painting. By building up layers of pigment, plaster and other materials, he gives the surface a distinct physical presence. His works bear the traces of their making while responding to what happens around them: the angle of the light, the viewer’s distance and the space they occupy. Up close, their texture reveals itself; from further away, the composition comes into view.

The three artists approach perception from different directions. Billet shows how light and reflection shift our gaze. Schouten explores how forms evoke and transform a space. Van Steendam makes us feel how matter slows and deepens the act of looking. In Fields of Perception, their works meet in the space between what is visible and what only emerges when we move, look longer and find a new position.

Artists: Greet Billet, Marien Schouten, Stan Van Steendam