Collage, décollage, recollage

“I adhere to a certain logic, but it is the surprises that give the work its poetic dimension.”

Bernard Villers has been a key figure in the Belgian art scene since the 1960s.
A ‘joyful minimalist (as Jacques Lizène would call him), a conceptual artist who, however, escapes the usual definition of this term. For Villers, “the concept, if there is a concept, is not prior to the work, it is constructed at the same time as the work is constructed.”

Villers views art as an open field of investigation, a playground in which he acknowledges an element of chance. The works do not arise from pure randomness, but there is no complete determination. And it is in this space between chance and determination – a space rarely claimed by artists – that the true freedom of Bernard Villers lies.

The works presented here span a period from the 1970s to 2025. It is striking how, despite a gap of more than forty years, these works respond to each other and follow the same logic. It is as if the artist, after many years, returns to play a game that had been set aside for a while. There is the series Retournements, works where “the back is as valuable as the front.” We cannot see what is before our eyes without inevitably thinking of what is hidden from us. In the Recto/Verso series, the artist plays with the transparency of paper. The color applied on one side appears transformed on the other, both close and distant.

In Bernard Villers’ work, there is no mystery in the process. The rules of the game are not hidden, and seeing all the tricks doesn’t spoil anything. The front and the back, a color and its memory. Things do not need to be in the foreground to exist, things leave traces. It is, and it was. Presence and absence. And always, lightness.

Curated by Marie Verboven

Opening Saturday 4.05, 3pm
Thursdays > Sundays, 11am > 6pm
Tuesday & Wednesday for groups by appointment
until Sunday 2.11

Location
Verbeke Foundation
Westakker 1
9190 Stekene (BE)

More info about Bernard Villers.