Tielemans presents painted panels as decor: full of colour, hanging on the wall, lying on the floor or hanging free in space. Together this decor forms an abstract landscape through which the viewer can walk. She draws attention to the visual quality of concentration, sensation, relations, attraction and repulsion – as if played out on the world as a stage in front of her.
Where strength and sensation often compete for attention in our visual culture, Tielemans unifies their voices. Via painterly techniques, she stalls any aesthetic judgments within landscapes, which sensationally compete for the eye’s attention against bare horizons. And in her absolute reduction of the physical environment around us, the artist prohibits us from making any moral judgments either. Tielemans’s work takes over our mind and bodies, and realigns our attention.
The ancillary publication thoroughly maps the recent work of Tielemans and relates it to her previous projects. The tension between painting, interactivity and popular culture is outlined in a text by Saskia van de Wiel, curator at Museum van Bommel van Dam. Freek Lomme, director Onomatopee, places the visual signature of Tielemans in a current cultural context and designates the value of this expression.
Van Bommel Van Dam exhibition curator: Saskia van de Wiel
Onomatopee exhibition Curator: Freek Lomme
Editorial publication: Saskia van de Wiel, Freek Lomme and Esther Tielemans
Graphic design publication: Adriaan Mellegers