DMW is proud to participate in the Discovery section of Art Brussels 2022 with new works by Caroline Van den Eynden and Joris Vanpoucke. The booth shows a selection of paintings and sculptures in a unique show that comments on transient memories and the tension between urban spaces and nature in the absence of the individual.

The sculptures of Caroline Van den Eynden are inspired by architecture and public spaces as a form of language developed throughout history. In urban planning as well as architecture, old plans are dismantled and used as the starting point for new buildings and installations. Likewise, Van den Eynden’s works use the artist’s personal memories of urban environments as elements for new plans to build installations of steel, brick and glass that question our relationship with public spaces.

Conversely, the naturalistic paintings of Joris Vanpoucke reflect upon the position of the artist as introspective observer of the artificial public space. Vanpoucke’s work consciously erases the line between the individual and his environment, reflecting the artist’s retreat from urban surroundings. Hence, the environment blending into Vanpoucke’s work is not one of personal memories of artificial constructs, but a more immediately natural one, appearing through distorted depictions of seascapes and landscapes.

If Vanpoucke’s works are ostensibly devoid of urban context, the process behind their creation reveals the enduring impact of memories of the non rural environment on personal representations. Conversely, the works of Van den Eynden, at first sight a recreation of the urban environment, reveal themselves as profoundly private presentations of singular memories. By juxtaposing the works of both artists, the exhibition, thus, wants to challenge the visitor to reflect on the different ways in which overlapping spaces of private and public life, of natural and urban environments, of spaces and scapes, can intersect.