During the exhibition ‘Supply and demand’, Tine Colen (1985, lives and works in Antwerp) will present an installation that consists of three self-made, artisanal objects: a nettle cloth, a broom and a woolen blanket dyed with diverse substances.

Colen made these objects using materials from her direct environment, things that were sometimes produced for very different goals. The end products of a long and often tedious labor, the objects in the installation are handworks more than autonomous artworks. Their fabrication was led by questions about their functionality as utensils and about the value and goal of labor in general. The working process was also a means for Colen to discover her personal environment, by looking for whatever could be useful and then handling the found materials.

The objects and the composition of the installation refer to a famous photograph by Walker Evans, a document from the Great Depression. As such, the work also evokes current crises. But it also clearly refers to painting, which is reduced to its ‘media’: paint, surface, brush. Colen has always been a painter, and for her this installation is an attempt to let practical and social questions from the so-called real world pour into art. Maybe these questions can revive the promise that art could also be material and mental labor: a work that isn’t fundamentally different from any other work, and that is — in a very concrete way — reaching out towards an alternative world.

NETTLE CLOTH nettle
BLANKET sheep wool dyed with privet, blackthorn, tansy, elderberry, blueberry, blackberry, walnut, alder, pine, lichen, nettle, saffron, turmeric, onion, tulip tree, knight sorrel, hollyhock, peach herb, marigold, gallapple, Mr. Freeze ice cream and Viktoria Kumaş Boyaları
BROOM horsehair, ash, fir and bamboo

Opening: 10.09, 6-9 pm.
Sat-Sun: open 14-18
Mon-Fri: open by appointment (0479/24.23.61 or veronikwillems@gmail.com)

Artists: Tine Colen