Unreadiness

From 16 April to 10 September, 2023, the Roger Raveel Museum brings together works by Jan Vercruysse (1948-2018), Nel Aerts (1987) and John Murphy (1945). The title of the exhibition, Unreadiness, is taken from Giacomo Joyce, a sixteen-page text written by James Joyce during his stay in Trieste in 1914 and published posthumously in 1968.[1] In this love story, Joyce expresses feelings of loneliness, loss and desire. The text forms a tangle of references hidden behind a veil of personal connotations and universal archetypes.

In a similar way, the artists in this exhibition have developed their own universe that draws on the private feelings of the makers. In doing so they make use of an art-historical and literary discourse full of iconographic symbols. The poetic word choices in the titles hint at double meanings, as do a number of recurring motifs, such as the veil, the stage curtain, the mask and the self-portrait. In a sensual game of concealing and revealing, the artworks bear witness to the creation itself: ‘art for its own sake, and for its own fate’.[2]

The general mood in many of the works is that of melancholy, an undefinable sense of loss and longing. Like a ship floating off course on an open sea, the artist feels stricken by loneliness and seeks to express this existential dread through a doppelganger, a character based on themselves. Watching and being watched go hand in hand. The works in this exhibition seem to exist in another, self-enclosed dimension, at a remove from the viewer.

Each of the artists questions and tests their chosen medium – be it sculpture, painting, photography or poetry – in the light of art history, paying attention to its traditions and fault lines. While one seeks an aesthetic clarity, another attacks the very notion. The encrypted structures of language, meaning and image are exposed, with a great deal of attention paid to material, carrier, volume in space and formats. A narrative or anecdotal dimension is avoided.

Unreadiness connects works by artists from two different generations and artworks from different periods, ranging from the early 1980 to 2022. The underlying question about the status and place of art today is more topical than ever. The exhibition attempts to provide an answer to a world that is both unsated and insatiable. Turned in on themselves like hermetic machines, the artworks invite the visitor to come closer and become acquainted with their strange forms, their images whose tranquil beauty – sometimes absurd but always sincere – has the power to touch and move us.

[1] ‘Unreadiness. A bare apartment. Torbid daylight. A long black piano: coffin of music. Poised on its edge a woman's hat, red-flowered, and umbrella, furled. Her arms: a casque, gules, and blunt spear on a field, sable.’ – James Joyce, Giacomo Joyce, vert. Gerardine Franken, Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 1969.

[2] Jan Vercruysse in conversation with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Flash Art International, no. 148, October 1989.