For the KMSKA, visual artist Hans Op de Beeck creates one large, experiential trail through a fictional, mysterious place. It is a kind of enigmatic, dark evocation of a deserted nocturnal park, in which all kinds of images of characters, still lifes, objects, animals, architectural constructions and natural elements merge into a peculiar world.
With the title, ‘Nocturnal Journey’, the artist wants to invite the visitor to take a journey through time and space, in body and mind, in an environment that carries the silence, the meditative but also the darkness and latent derailment of the night. He creates a journey along recognisable elements and emotions, but which can equally take us into the unknown and subconscious.
Life-size sculptures alternate with images reduced and enlarged in scale, as in a surreal dream in which things often appear intermingled in various proportions. The characters reflect different stages of life, emotions and our daily human rituals, while the animals, objects and architecture evoke environments with which the viewer can identify, and they thus also trigger very personal memories and affections.
What ties everything together here is that the artist realised all the works mainly in grey, black and white, making them seem hushed and frozen in time as if petrified or covered under a layer of dust.
All the components in this fictional world, rich in references, refer to different time periods and socio-cultural environments and are very diverse in their aesthetics. By working anachronistically and eclectically, the artist aims to put time, space, formal language and status into perspective, while at the same time arriving at the universal and timeless essence of what binds us in our humanity. At the same time, we find numerous art-historical references to the KMSKA's collection and how similar themes have been depicted by artists throughout the centuries.
The exhibition is complemented by a separate projection room for Op de Beeck's art film ‘Staging Silence (3)’ (2019), and his latest animated film ‘Vanishing Point’ (2024), both entirely in the spirit of a nocturnal journey.
Artists: Hans Op de Beeck
