Bas Louter

This exhibition at Buro Empty is the premier of a series of big portraits, Bas Louter made during the last months. Each subject is historically important, captured in charcoal on large sheets of paper. For the most part Louter deals with forgotten and unknown persons. We are standing face to face with a proud history, a pride that is being forgotten; consequently absurd. Men with grotesque uniforms in portraits full of status and power are frozen into drawings so large they become inescapable. In such action these forgotten persons are brought back to our collective memory, to the actuality of now.

As in the work of an archeologist, forgotten treasures are waiting to be discovered in the seemingly arbitrary. A recycling of images is at the heart of the working process of Bas. Imagery from contrasting origins serve as a base for his arrangements. Earlier work was also born from similar sourcing and montage, inspiration in process resulting in complex 3-d theatres, built up of cardboard cut-out protagonists, scattered in chaos across the space. The super abundance of images and fragments of images from then has been replaced by the simplicity of portrait, without having dampened its voice. It’s a deceiving simplicity. Here the imagination is touching reality in a strange manner.

There is an incapacity to recall the past and a parallel inability of the portrait and the portrayed to merge. The figures in the drawings are peering over us unmistakably but are they taking place in our imagination?

This is a typical combination of Bas’s humor, absurdity and bitter seriousness.

Pressetext

Bas Louter
new drawings