OV Project (en-US)

With ‘Disorder, Transmission, Love in Silence’, Olivier Vrankenne once again unites two oeuvres rooted in different disciplines and artistic languages and, in doing so, creates unexpected interactions and connections. This juxtaposition sparks a poetic dialogue between the Belgian artist Carole Vanderlinden (1973) and the Japanese artist Goro Kakei (1930–2021).

Carole Vanderlinden is a painter whose painting and drawing practice is enriched by 30 years of experience. Her great interest in, and knowledge of, art history encompasses various disciplines. Rather than alluding to these directly, she interprets and recombines them, allowing her own artistic language to be imbued with their impressions and considerations. With paintings that exhibit an effortless resistance to any single style or theme, she evades all categorisation. Despite this, her work remains immediately recognisable as her own.

Carole Vanderlinden’s works in the exhibition are powerful and layered. Whether the palette is vibrant or more restrained, all her works embody a certain freshness – the occasional rough edge notwithstanding. The picture plane, sometimes approached as a collage, is robustly worked. Of essential importance is the material quality of it, with its complex layering and resulting texture. While in older works, the traces visible along the edges of the canvas can often provide a glimpse of the artist's process, in the works shown here, these are concealed. The artist provides these works with a frame, which is not only functional but also constitutes an integral part of the picture plane.

Goro Kakei, a renowned Japanese sculptor of the post-war period, was born in Shizuoka City on the coast of Japan and died in Tokyo. Starting in the 1950s onwards, he produced a large number of sculptures, oil paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs, using a wide range of materials and techniques.

Goro Kakei’s free-spiritedness is manifest in the selection for this exhibition, which consists of smaller sculptures and works on paper made between 1989 and 2020. His love for human beings and nature are at the heart of these works, with the most prominent theme being the body. Kakei explored this subject, and variations on it, throughout his career, either by creating classical forms from a mass or by seeking subtle human expression in raw material.

If there is something Carole Vanderlinden’s oeuvre undeniably shares with that of Goro Kakei, it is that same free-spiritedness. It is present in the attitude with which Vanderlinden approaches and creates her works, as well as in the freedom she grants the viewer to interpret her work. She sets no limits or predetermined guidelines – neither for herself during the creative process, nor for the viewer interpreting her work. The titles Vanderlinden gives her works are sometimes affectingly pure and honest, and at other times completely unexpected. In this way, she challenges the viewer to look again from a new perspective.

Carole Vanderlinden’s flirtation with the boundaries between abstraction and the figurative is another expression of her freedom, and navigating the two is a game at which she is adept. Although largely focused on figurative art, Goro Kakei likewise sees abstraction as a genre with conventions that beg to be playfully bent. Whereas Kakei often does so directly, such that the work is made instantly readable to the viewer, Carole inhabits this twilight zone in a much more subtle way.

. Despite the absolute differences between these two artists – such as in their visual language, their approach to the material, their backgrounds, and working processes – we still see many similarities in the spirit and joy their work exudes. These qualities seem to be rooted in a significant commonality: both artists have complete trust in an intuitive approach and follow through on it. Their practices and their processes of searching break though the limits of cultural language in an attempt to transcend it. The works of Goro Kakei and Carole Vanderlinden exude a freedom and a purity that have the ability to move the viewer; they carry something fragile within them while also having a playfulness that frequently elicits a smile or a moment of reverie.

- Liesje Vandenbroeck, April 2024