Enigmatic Figures Are Frozen in Time in Hans Op de Beeck’s Lifelike, Monochromatic Sculptures

Seated on the ground with an arm resting on her knee, an exhausted boxer recovers from bodily exertion in Hans Op de Beeck’s latest life-size sculpture, “Hélène.” Coated within the artist’s signature shade of grey, the work captures the interaction of sunshine and shadow to disclose delicate folds of cloth, padding, and the figures’s bodily options. “Op de Beeck has at all times paid particular consideration to the second once we let go of our social roles and each day worries and give up to a second once we are no person and nowhere for some time,” a assertion says, “once we slip into the unknown of the unconscious.”

A variety of dualities are on the core of Op de Beeck’s apply, equivalent to wakefulness and sleep, movement and stillness, or life and dying. “Danse Macabre,” for instance, juxtaposes the playful, nostalgic motif of a baroque carousel with cranium ornamentation and a spectral skeleton in an extended costume, symbolically analyzing the cycle of life and relationships between the current and the previous, vitality and mortality, and pleasure and horror.

Op de Beeck’s monumental sculptures (beforehand) usually concentrate on a central, heroic determine, like “The Boatman” or “The Horseman,” under, which depict lithe, enigmatic figures who seem about to embark on adventures. Undergirding these depictions is a way that, whereas the characters look like on the transfer, they’re concurrently frozen in time.

On the Biennale de Lyon in 2022, Op de Beeck’s immersive set up “We had been the final to remain” invited viewers into an alternate actuality containing the remnants of a mysterious, maybe apocalyptic, occasion. Devoid of individuals, the scene is of a small group the place residents might have sustained a easy lifestyle. Each floor is coated in grey, with chairs overturned and houses vacated. Guests, inherently colorfully dressed and full of life, activated the set up by highlighting stark contrasts between presence and absence.

Op de Beeck additionally references the custom of vanitas, a style of still-life portray popularized in the course of the Dutch Golden Age that relied on symbolism to indicate the fleeting nature of life, the knowledge of dying, and the futility of delight, wealth, or glory. Nestled someplace between actuality, goals, and imagined adventures, the artist leaves interpretations open: Has one thing occurred to petrify the world? Will it at all times keep this manner? As if turned to stone, “The Horseman” will eternally peer over his shoulder, simply as “Hélène” will proceed to relaxation.

See extra of Op de Beeck’s work on his web site and Instagram.

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