HANS OP DE BEECK

b. 1969

“The soft, grey plaster of which the work is constructed seems to abstract the attractions in dark stone, like a kind of contemporary Pompei, covered with the dust of the layered, silent time.“

His work consists of sculptures, installations, video work, photography, animated films, drawings, water colors and writing.

We can always find the small, poetic detail in his oeuvre. Sculptural, life-sized interpretations of everyday objects such a piece of fruit, a bottle, a book or a trio of dice are combined with objects on a reduced scale, such as furniture pieces or small models of fictitious architectural forms. The tabletop is used as a small stage, a platform on which small, silent, intimate worlds are created. These table sculptures, all executed in the same monochrome grey synthetic gypsum, refer to our daily life as well as to the heritage and the tradition of painting. The collections of objects at different scales are reminiscent of, for example, the Renaissance Wunderkammer, the silence of Giorgio Morandi's still lifes or the associative compositions and questioning of the status of the real and the represented by René Magritte. Because of the use of the grey gypsum, Pompeii and the 'archeological object' also come to mind.