M HKA Ensembles

Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Wijnegem (Kanaal)

14 April 2018 - 02 June 2018

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition devoted to Jef Verheyen, featuring previously unseen works from the artist’s estate that will be shown in public for the first time. The exhibition focuses on key paintings from the 1960s and 70s. Colours represent Jef Verheyen’s interpretation of the world and the ways in which we perceive nature and eternality. He believed our perception of the world has nothing to do with the factual depiction of the natural landscape. He employed colour and light to transcend the physical human experience. His work makes us experience light and dark, depth and surface, two-dimensionality and non-dimensionality.

Verheyen cultivated relationships with other prominent artists of his time. In particular, Jef Verheyen and Lucio Fontana were close friends. Their passionate conversations included correspondence about art, life, ideas, and process, as demonstrated by this letter from Fontana to Verheyen, dated 1961.
 

Dear Jef, you are a very dear, young friend. Your sympathy for me is strong, and you say very grand things about me that I accept as friendship. You are a young man full of enthusiasm and you have many qualities; I am sure you will do important things in contemporary art. Your questions are interesting, but it is very hard to respond to your queries in a satisfactory way, because my French is terrible. I hope to see you again in Albissola, to speak in person about certain issues regarding contemporary art. I think that matter is important to the evolution of art, but that the artist has to dominate it; it is the element the artist needs for their new creations, but the important thing, the most important thing is the idea – I have made the spheres, which are elements that appear to wholly contradict my idea of “spaziale”, but I think they are key to my artistic practice. When you find a new material for your idea, it is important to launch into the work; it is of no importance that the result is not immediate, the day will come that you see you are in the right. Dear Jef, you have made me say very complicated things, and art is a such a mysterious matter, we are pursuing this mystery all our lives, and we are happy not to discover it, because otherwise that would mean the end of art – and the mystery of the intelligence of man – until soon Jef, Fontana.

Letter from Lucio Fontana to Jef Verheyen, Milan, 4 July 1961 , translated from French to English by Kate Mayne

Curated by Annelien De Troij

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