Mapping inside out

Joke Raes - Jan Verbruggen

23.03 - 10.05.2025

Opening reception: Sunday 23 March, 3 - 7pm

* In presence of the artists

Eva Steynen Gallery proudly presents the duo exhibition Mapping inside out, featuring sculptures and drawing by Joke Raes (1983) and paintings by Jan Verbruggen (1980). Both artists are storytellers and present in their work a kind of in-between world, an imaginary botanical world that in its own way refers to an inner landscape, a topographical way of seeing.

MAPPING INSIDE OUT

For both Joke Raes and Jan Verbruggen, the topographical is an important aspect in their work, as an inner or imaginary pictorial map.

In Western and non-Western cultures there is a long tradition in which we find the pictorial properties of topographical maps. They form 'strange' representations in topographical maps and show the world from a different, sometimes unknown perspective.

In addition, inner cartography shows its own subjective overlay: to see the inner self from outside. Through this alienation they show a process of the inner space combined with landscape outside.

Inner Maps are a reflection on the complex nature of geographical maps: they are neither entirely an image, nor entirely a concept. They create a combination of mapping the visual external world and abstract ideas, icons, which blur this dichotomy by drawing on the impressions of seeing, depicted memories and the invisible. These Inner Maps are like a geography of impressions and emotions, a presentation of some fleeting moments of an inner world.

JOKE RAES

(°1983, living and working between Brugge and Ghent)

After finishing her stay at the HISK in 2016, Joka Raes' work got its actual form during an underwater exhibition in the Red Sea and a residency with indigenous communities deep in the Peruvian Amazon. These experiences inspired her to develop her visual language from a fascination for the complexity and diversity of nature and humanity.

Raes works with various media and materials: drawings, watercolors, performance, ceramics, industrial remains, installations, performances and sculptures. Her work explores themes such as duality of identity, the fragility and beauty of existence, tension and balance within images, disappearing and appearing, imaginary walks. She interacts with the public by encouraging people to collect love water that she uses in her drawings; water from all over the world from rivers, lakes or seas. Her organic visual language, reminds us of the lush structures of rainforests, combines effortless movement with an obsessive attention to detail. Each work seems to arise spontaneously, but on closer inspection it shows an astonishing precision.

In 2017, Raes started her ongoing series of porcelain masks called ‘Mask x’. These masks reflect both her theatre background and her reflections on fluid identity; each mask is given a unique name and identity by the buyer. In doing so, she plays on the ambiguity and fragility of identity and the tension between revealing and concealing.

Joke Raes exhibits since 2011, national and international. In 2016 she finished her postgradual studied at the H.I.S.K. (Ghent, B), since then she exhibits national and international. In 2024 she received the Art Prize at Ceramic Brussels, which earned her a two-month artist-in-residence at Fondation L’Accolade in Paris. She developed her ceramic practice during residencies at EKWC in the Netherlands and in Arita, Saga, Japan. Exhibition include a.o. SMAK Coming People BE ('11), the Amazon Forest PER ('12), the Red Sea EGY ('12), Vanhaerents Art Collection BE ('13), the Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art RUS ('15), Az Alma BE ('17), Van Abbemuseum NL ('18), the Belgian Embassy in Tokyo and Kyoto Art Center JP ('18), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens BE ('19), CC Destelheide BE ('19), The White House Gallery BE ('19), Poortersloge BE ('20), DMW Gallery BE ('21), Franzis Engels Gallery NL ('22), D’Apostrof BE ('23), Verduyn Gallery BE ('23), Galerie P BE ('24), Kunstenhuis Harelbeke BE ('24), her solo exhibition Wandermask in the Japanese Garden in Ostend for the Ensor Year, and the Triennale Brugge CC Brugge BE ('24).

In 2025, Raes will publish her first monograph, be named Artist of the Year at Zebra Ghent, and will be resident artist at CC Bruges.

JAN VERBRUGGEN

(°1980, lives and works in Grimbergen and Brussels)

Jan Verbruggen is a story teller. His oil paintings and gouaches on paper show surrealist fragments out of fictive events. Various narrative lines are transferred into absurdist scenes, populated by comic animals and mysterious figures. Human emotions and situations become a world of dreams and nightmares in which forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes. The comic-like events are literally intruded by exotic floral landscapes.

In Verbruggen's paintings are imaginary landscapes seen from above, opening the perspective and disorientating the viewer. Wandering figures overlook landscapes together with the spectator, or are immersed in the scenes. Verbruggen explores the boundaries of the territory that surrounds him. Orientation is essential in this process, like a map is indispensable when traveling. Not only the artist is searching for navigation and timing, also the spectator is challenged to leave the focus-point and to wander through the scenery, where every brushstroke is visible and reveals another detail.

Using the classical technique of the 'grisaille' under painting, permits him to define composition, lightning and atmosphere of his work and develop a clear vision of the overall sense of the painting. With a lush and baroque colour pallet Verbruggen's sceneries turn estranged and reveal a certain 'unheimlich' feeling, always with a twist.

His imaginary spaces create an in-between world that is transformative and offers an insight behind the surface of the visible; an 'embodied space', where the private and outside world literally immerse.

Jan Verbruggen holds a Master in Visual Arts-Fine Arts of the LUCA School of Arts, Brussels. For several years he was chairman of 'W-O-L-K-E' an artist run initiative to create innovative spaces for artistic encounters. His works have been exhibited, among others, at BOZAR (Brussels), Bellevue Museum, Brussels, Gallery Fortlaan 17 (Ghent, B), SecondRoom (Antwerp & Brussels), Somos Art, Berlin (D), DOM (Brussels), Positions Art Fair Berlin (D), Eva Steynen Gallery(s), Antwerp (B), Art Rotterdam (NL), Art on Paper Brussels (B), Onboards Biennale, Antwerp (B)

Images:

Joke Raes, Wave, 2020, industrial remnants, 50 x 50 x 40 cm

Jan Verbruggen, De onbestemden, 2025, tempera, oil on canvas, 150 x 110 cm

Joke Raes, Sprawl, 2025, ceramics, mixed media, 20 x 45, 30 cm

Jan Verbruggen, Echo 05, 2025, oil on carboard, mixed media, 18,5 x 32 x 4cm

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Works