(ENG, for NL scroll down)
From December 12 to 15, Art Antwerp returns to Antwerp Expo for its fourth edition. For the first time, Belgian artist and winner of the Gaver Painting Prize 2024, Ilke Cop, will present work at a Belgian art fair, following multiple international presentations at fairs in Luxembourg and the United States. With the solo project titled The Fool in the House, under the wings of TATJANA PIETERS (Ghent), Cop will present 12 new works in a surprising medium: dry pastel.
After her acclaimed solo exhibition Hardcore / Softspore at TATJANA PIETERS in the summer of 2024, Cop once again presents colourful, large-scale works that reflect a resolutely new perspective on the artist and their role in society. The title of the new series, The Fool in the House, is a reference to Coventry Patmore's 1854 poem The Angel in the House, and the essay of the same name by Virginia Woolf, who anticipated the destructive critique of the idealization of the obedient and subordinate woman. In the works, Cop questions the role of the artist as both entertainer and critic. The fool is often a figure on the margins of society, thus enjoying a unique privilege of delivering criticism to those in power. Cop asks how the contemporary artist can take up this position in a polarized world in times of climate crisis and war.
For these new works, the artist uses soft pastel, a medium originally used for still lifes and sentimental paintings on a small scale. Here, Cop blows the works up to life-size or larger-than-life depictions of the artist herself. She pairs these with smaller works that serve as talismans accompanying the larger images. More than ever, we see the hand of the artist in the hatching and scribbles with pastel. In doing so, Cop explicitly references the large pastel works of Paula Rego and the photography of Cindy Sherman, work in which the role of the female artist is also central.
'These works stem from an ongoing struggle to maintain oneself in an (art) world where ethics, emotion, and narrative are being pushed to the margins. The fool or clown is a figure who triumphs in this margin and confronts the world by questioning himself.' – Ilke Cop