Interview with Barbara De Coninck and Sebastiaan Van Doninck (talk in Dutch)
when? Dec. 4, 7:30 pm
where? De Groene Waterman, Antwerp
Please confirm your attendance here.
‘From 2022 onwards, after a two-year interlude during which human figures and humour crept into Van Doninck’s works, the wandering artist began to seek out abstraction, both in his own garden and on Gran Canaria. “My work became looser, less tied to observation. My drawings became plays on rhythm, lines, and shapes. Minute slips of the pen led me in unexpected directions. Looking at these works, their immediate and free-flowing lines capture your full attention.” A year later, in the Vosges, “light, structure, texture, direction, and depth re-entered my art. Those landscapes feature explicit organic motifs, like small plants, feathers, or spruce trees.” Van Doninck also began to photograph his surroundings at that time, creating prints of the structures he came across.
In the autumn of 2023, Van Doninck returned to Gran Canaria and walked down yet another path. “This was when I started ‘stacking’, and ignoring perspective. My work became more critical in the sense that I covertly included subtle motifs, like a car on fire, or a statue of Columbus.” Walking Drawings (2024) is based on Van Doninck’s travels to Lanzarote and Omaha Beach in the spring and summer of that same year, respectively. During those trips, the artist rolled out the red carpet for lines and dots. In his lyrical-abstract, high-contrast, and smudged sketches, he managed to achieve a relaxed and utterly natural expression.’
From ‘Time turns abstract when I'm drawing’ Barbara De Coninck in: Walking Drawings
Barbara De Coninck is a Belgian author, independent curator and friend of artists. She currently oversees publications at the Flanders Architecture Institute. She publishes on the visual arts and is a contributor to the Pompidou programme on the classical radio station Klara (VRT). Her texts have been published by Gallimard, Mercatorfonds, SKIRA, Silvana Editoriale and Templon, among others. She is an editorial board member of the Brussels art magazine GLEAN. Barbara De Coninck is a passionate birdwatcher, making podcasts.
The book coincides with the exhibition at De Warande Turnhout (till 03.03.2025)