November 26, 2021: Mathieu V. Staelens (visual art), Anjana Sen (poetry), Aristo Vopĕnka (photography)
Audits of Destruction, Elektroshock therapy to extract the symbolism from the rose, 2020, color pencil & ballpoint on polymer, 14 x 9.8cm
The Brightest Aphorism, 2021, color pencil & ballpoint on polymer, 11 x 8cm
Mathieu V. Staelens
Belgian artist Mathieu V. Staelens saw the light of day in Ostend, that obscure place where Marvin Gay recorded some songs and James Ensor fooled around with the establishment. After his studies in the visual arts he stayed in Antwerp.
Mathieu V. Staelens uses drawing, painting and sculpture in his quest to emancipate Beauty. His work originates from a hybrid of visual culture and philosophy. The artistic research focuses on personality industries: Fashion as a proposal-machine of identities, Design as the production-machine of attributes, while contextualising those fabricated identities. It's the realm where those identities are defined and start pressuring the etiquette of social interactions. His work focuses on the construction of identity rendered by the current status of beauty, the quest for meaning and the question of happiness from the viewpoint of identity-proposals by the earlier mentioned personality industries. At the heart of Staelens' work, we find meticulously small drawings in a self developed technique, holding situations of duality, irony and simple beauty.
Website: www.mathieuvstaelens.be Instagram: @mathieuvstaelens_artist
The Kids are Alright, 2021, color pencil on polymer, 10.3 x 8.1 cm
The Heart of the Matter, 2021, color pencil & ballpoint on polymer, 13 x 8cm
Peer Pressure – The Nonet
You were born beautiful, I hold you tighter,
From behind thick glasses, eyes shine brighter.
Through those stainless-steel train-track braces,
your self-conscious smile lifts life lighter.
Your natural undyed hair, grace,
unpierced innocent face,
untattooed skin,
unwilling
fighter!
Anjana Sen
Anjana Sen has been writing poems and short stories for about three years, with a few publications and awards to her name.
Originally from Calcutta, India, she is settled in Glasgow, Scotland, and tries to fuse the two cultures together through her words.
The best is about to be.
Website: www.anjanasen.blog
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Aristo Vopĕnka
Aristo Vopĕnka is an artist and film director, born in the Netherlands and working from Brussels, Belgium. Vopĕnka uses a variety of art forms. In his recent work, Vopĕnka explores the boundaries between photography, illustration, painting and print. Using an experimental attitude towards these different media, new forms of expression take place. The fascination to work with space, light, sound, and visuals is a constant evolution of what we know, questioning the possibilities of today's art.
Website: https://aristovopenka.com Instagram: @a.vopenka
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