Posture Editions N° 56 ‘Puzzling The Laughing Petals’ contains about 75 works on paper and was launched during the opening of the expo ‘Écriture Botanique’ (1-29 June 2024), a duo show with Johan Gelper at Valerie Traan Gallery.
With an open mind, Chris Meulemans (b. 1967) explores the human urge to manipulate and control our environment. She does this in paintings that, thanks to an enigmatic combination of figurative elements and abstract techniques, attract the viewer and encourage them to read their own story in the image.
The plants and flowers that she depicts are a vehicle to evoke the fragility of nature, but also of our daily life, of our imposed structures in an almost desperate attempt to control nature. Emphasized or fragmentary grid patterns in the paintings show a discrete reference to science, to the human urge to categorize, to study and therefore to control everything.
Meulemans’ found titles, which she intuitively connects with her images, further mislead the viewer. In their absurdity, they have something funny, but also disturbing: the context created by the combination of title and image is uncomfortable. Behind the painted layers of her visual-poetic work, a door to the imagination is opened.
Frank Maes, curator Emergent, Veurne and gallerist at Valerie Troost, Ostend writes an essay accompanying the artist's work.
