M HKA Ensembles

Installation, variable dimensions.

Collection: Estate Bernd Lohaus.

In the 1960s Bernd Lohaus studied under Joseph Beuys at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf. In the mid-1960s he moved to Antwerp, where he played an important role as an artist in the development of a flourishing avant-garde scene, especially as a co-founder of the legendary Wide White Space gallery. Lohaus’s visual language is very simple, in terms of materials as well as of design. His materials are always pure and natural, to do with life itself, and his works breathe restrained poetry. They delve into the relation between an Ich [I] and a Du [thou], between the artist, the viewer and the work of art, but also between people ad between people and things in general. The installation consists of a passage that has become inaccessible: blocked by horizontal bands of brown paper tape. Between the different bands there is always an opening allowing us to peer through. Yet the installation also provokes a sense of captivity. A confined sphere is suggested by the grid effect of the bands of tape. There is also something vulnerable over the piece, not just in the materials used but also in the emotive space they create.