Artists Hans Op De Beeck
Venue Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen
Photography Hans Op De Beeck
The Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck (born in Turnhout in 1969, lives in Brussels) works with almost all available artistic media. Be it for his sculptures or expansive installations, his large-format watercolours or videos and animated films, he avails masterfully of the staging strategies of theatre, film and architecture so as to create atmospherically dense, dream-like images that always seem familiar and yet alien.
In the very special atmosphere of the Baroque moated castle in Morsbroich, Op de Beeck is presenting a broad selection of his works of the past twelve years. He has created a series of open stages which the viewer can enter – partly on foot, but always in his mind – and be transported into a world where reality and fiction become superimposed and where time seems to stand still: The Silent Castle.
Visitors encounter life-sized plaster figures, quite naturally, as if they were at home in the castle’s former living spaces. Like the visitors themselves, they stand on soft carpets, resting, lost in thought or daydreaming. The carpets cushion the footsteps and muffle the sounds. Their grey colour blends with the reduced palette of Op de Beeck’s sculptural still lives. Here, life pauses for a moment, giving rise to an atmosphere of concentration, intimacy and contemplation.
Hans Op de Beeck creates places of silence, scenarios in which the viewer can immerse himself or which he can fill with associations and memories of his own. But these works also create a subtle tension. The piano is silent, the kiddie rides in front of the supermarket are stationary, water lilies conceal the uncanny depths of the black lake, and yet something surprising could happen at any moment, be it solely in our minds.
