With 'The Gulf Between', the Warande presents an exhibition about black, white and everything in between.
The title refers to the first American film production in technicolor. This film from 1917 has largely been lost. Only a few fragments remained.
In the work of the artists in this exhibition, tones of gray show the upper hand. The disappearance of color is part of the core of their practice. In this way they create a twilight world that connects with reality in a different way. This tonal world reflects reality as we experience it as a non-objective participant. The reality where memories, visions, and estrangement make their mark.
That is why - contrary to what we suspect in the word gray - these works are far from dull, but often contain a great deal of tension.
When color photography made its appearance, photographers remained stuck to black-and-white photography. Just because the expression possibilities are different. Even in painting, there are early examples of black / white or gray works. Just think of the grisailletechniek that already popped up in the 15th century. These works are rather a kind of game of illusion or trompe l'oeil. They show the technical mastery of the artist. It was not until the 20th century that artists began to explore the possibilities of omitting color as a means of expression in painting, for example the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert at the beginning of the century. In the 1980s, in Belgium, the movement within painting in which the color became scarce, with painters such as Luc Tuymans and Bert De Beul, specifically came into being.
And more recently, there are artists who have driven this even further to extremes. For example artists like Hans Op de Beeck who also applied this in sculpture. The omission of color has therefore been given a permanent place in different media, for example in terms of rather obvious charcoal drawings, but also in painting, sculpture, video art, and so on.
In this exhibition De Warande brings together a rich selection of contemporary works of art in a palette of black, white and gray that you experience in different ways the power of colorlessness.