09 A Spark of Joy

18 07 > 03 10 2020
Ilse Pierard | Gabi Rets

How complex is the core of life, how complex its representation? In her artistic paper works llse Pierard focusses on the abstracted form of a cell, the basic and the smallest unit of life. Her intriguing and fragile paper works in their reduced oval shape are an ode to the cell. The artist’s concern is to represent the timeless aesthetic harmony and beauty of an existential truth with a simple yet intense distillate of her own artistic material and language.
In her working process she explores a wide range of everyday handicraft paper and wrapping material: transparent paper, silk paper as well as craft paper, metal foil or cellophane sheet. Accepting wear marks alongside the edges and corners – traces of use and handling – the artist emphasizes their fragility and liveliness.

Gabi Rets plays with everyday paper. Torn and glued newspapers form airy line constructions that cast their own shadow. Packaging and cardboard, stamped and cut, work like enlarged clichés. Together, all elements form an expanding visual vocabulary, with which Rets assembles her figurative visual stories. Depending on space or theme, the variable parts are differently combined, sometimes literally and figuratively in several layers.

Gabi Rets has made two new series for the gallery space, holders and beholders, in which color plays a role in addition to material and structure. While the attuned hues of the beholders subtly hint at the shadow as theme, the material colors black, white, gray and brown of the holders refer to their own symbolic value.