HANS OP DE BEECK : THE QUIET PARADE

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HANS OP DE BEECK : THE QUIET PARADE

After the abandoned campsite frozen in a gangue of grey paint installed in a shed hangar at the last Lyon Biennial (We were the last to stay),¹ a new gigantic immersive installation with the appearance of a city by Hans Op de Beeck has taken over the spaces of the Amos Rex Museum in Helsinki. The Belgian artist and scenographer (born 1969 in the province of Antwerp), whose grey works (paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, videos, etc.) will soon be confronted with the shimmering palette of the Flemish masters at the Museum of Flanders, has created a Silent Parade halfway between a dance of death and a fairy tale. With Hans Op de Beeck, monochrome rhymes with melancholy and fairytale… For him, grey is more than a reference to the ashes of the famous memento mori from the Book of Genesis (“Remember, man, that you are dust and will return to

dust…”), it is a reference to snow and its capacity to install silence and stop time. Although it resounds with all the noises and whirlwinds of the world (funfairs through the merry-go-round – though ridden by skeletons… birthday parties through the slices of cake scattered here and there…), they are muffled noises and gestures that have been stopped, moments of life in suspense that are transcribed in this large grey landscape.

We enter with hushed steps, as if on a path buried under the snow, without even daring to whisper: here we are voyeurs and surveyors, following these paths of life frozen in an achromatic gangue inevitably evoking the inhabitants of Pompeii petrified by the lava.

In this monochrome and atone village, similar to a giant memento mori, or perhaps rather to a dream, we will come across children (blowing a soap bubble, playing with a butterfly or pulling the string of a bow), two men in conversation, a boatman, and an enigmatic rider, a young girl asleep on a raft floating in a pond of water lilies, giant blackberries, a Vanitas XL, and a few other disproportionate still lifes. Something to ponder, no doubt about it…