#94: No objections? Just do it.|#141: Start a Publication Studio at Kunsthal Gent in the nearby future.|#2: Bring something new to the city of Ghent.|#124: Do less, do it better.|#91: Embrace doubt.|#117: Consider design, organisational structures and architecture as programme.|#98: The success of it will not lie in the result but in the process.|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#79: The layered painting in the Old House has the potential to become the emblem to explain what Kunsthal Gent is doing.|#84: The White Cube is a lie.|#105: Kunsthal Gent is local in scale, but globally connected.|#14: Can you also remain a toddler institution?|#87: Always keep in mind there is something really special about being in a room that is 19 meters tall.|#24: We invest long-term in individual artists’ careers, working over time in different contexts. This also applies to designers / web-developers / photographers / volunteers /…|#90: The best systems have a failure or ‘a hole’ in them…|#35: The artist fee should be good.|#19: Have fun at the exhibition.|#33: We will ensure work by female artists and curators make up at least 50% of our programme each year.|#99: Evolve according to changing needs.|#55: Keep basic human needs on the forefront.|#58: Kunsthal Gent is a monument. If you plan to drill a hole, contact Tomas first.|#25: Never ask the artist to just present their work, ask them to co-create and co-organise the space.|#62: Be kind. Full dishwasher: empty it.|#47: Artists need to be supported more than ever in the development of their practice due to the gaps that have been created in the field of fine art|#5: Kunsthal Gent is a city where different identities collide in an ongoing exhibition without end date. New exhibitions are always a new layer in this ongoing story.|#94: No objections? Just do it.|#141: Start a Publication Studio at Kunsthal Gent in the nearby future.|#2: Bring something new to the city of Ghent.|#124: Do less, do it better.|#91: Embrace doubt.|#117: Consider design, organisational structures and architecture as programme.|#98: The success of it will not lie in the result but in the process.|#92: We’re a learning organisation.|#79: The layered painting in the Old House has the potential to become the emblem to explain what Kunsthal Gent is doing.|#84: The White Cube is a lie.|#105: Kunsthal Gent is local in scale, but globally connected.|#14: Can you also remain a toddler institution?|#87: Always keep in mind there is something really special about being in a room that is 19 meters tall.|#24: We invest long-term in individual artists’ careers, working over time in different contexts. This also applies to designers / web-developers / photographers / volunteers /…|#90: The best systems have a failure or ‘a hole’ in them…|#35: The artist fee should be good.|#19: Have fun at the exhibition.|#33: We will ensure work by female artists and curators make up at least 50% of our programme each year.|#99: Evolve according to changing needs.|#55: Keep basic human needs on the forefront.|#58: Kunsthal Gent is a monument. If you plan to drill a hole, contact Tomas first.|#25: Never ask the artist to just present their work, ask them to co-create and co-organise the space.|#62: Be kind. Full dishwasher: empty it.|#47: Artists need to be supported more than ever in the development of their practice due to the gaps that have been created in the field of fine art|#5: Kunsthal Gent is a city where different identities collide in an ongoing exhibition without end date. New exhibitions are always a new layer in this ongoing story.|
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Opening: 24.09.2021 – 20:00

24.09—05.12.2021

Exhibition

Eric Croes / Julien Meert:
Ik zal je spiegel zijn

With the exhibition Ik zal je spiegel zijn (‘I’ll be your mirror’), Kunsthal Gent presents the first duo show of Eric Croes & Julien Meert in Gent. The artists create a shared universe full of magic, alchemy and fantasy, where autobiographical elements mingle with symbols belonging to a collective unconscious, to different cultures and periods in the history of representation.

The works in the exhibition are all new and made especially for the context of Kunsthal Gent, a process that slowly took shape over the past months and that invited both artists to respond to each other’s practice. While they work in distinctly different media - Croes in ceramics, Meert in painting and collage - with this new work they sometimes mirror each other’s codes, motifs and colours.

Four large ceramic sculptures by Eric Croes, inspired by medieval chess pieces, are positioned like guardians, watching over us, guarding the border between the real world and the spiritual world. A border that is also reflected in the title, ‘I’ll be your mirror’, a reference to dark fairytales.

With a series of self portraits, the notion of the mirror is also omnipresent in the work of Julien Meert. These mirrors refer to the inner struggle of inexorable loneliness and a place of depersonalisation. “Looking at yourself in a mirror is a way to slowly disintegrate” Julien says. A trigger for a mental feedback loop leading into an existential unease.

So at first sight, humor and colour seem omnipresent with both artists. But looking closer, we discover that this humor turns black quickly and that colour is just a thin artificial layer balancing on top of a series of complex and personal works, filled with references to dark medieval times, religion, cinema, art-history.



Eric Croes (1978) lives and works in Brussels. For several years he has developed his themes of choice through the medium of ceramics. Motivated by both his personal interests as well as his practice as such, Eric Croes, like many artists of his generation, utilises new tools and new production methods, transcending long-prevailing polarities: craft versus art, tradition versus modernity, art versus design, traditional tools and media versus technology. For Eric Croes, ‘making’ is a key concept that leads to a return to the workshop, the pleasure of craftwork and actual doing.

Julien Meert (1983) lives and works in Brussels, employing a great variety of mediums in his work. He tends to cancel the hierarchy between the existing separating the categories in the visual field: in a mixture of heterogeneous languages, he brings together the unbridled gesture of abstract expressionism with technical rigor of a detailed craftsmanship.

Both artists are represented by Sorry We're Closed, Brussels

Eric Croes / Julien Meert:
Ik zal je spiegel zijn

MDC KH sept2021 005 LR