Back Stage: The Rear Side [1]

Exhibition view. Gallery Sofie Van de Velde. Nieuw Zuid. Antwerp. 2017

Backstage: The Rear Side. The rear of the “Barberini Faun” (Drunken Satyr) in the Glyptothek in Munich is rough because it was originally attached to a garden wall. The satyr is asleep and presumably drunk. His legs are splayed open wide and he is unembarrassed to reveal his manhood. In the prude 19th century, museum custodians would guide ladies past the shocking front to the rear side: there, barely visible, a little tail peeps out: Thank goodness, it’s an animal! The front of the artwork conjures up illusions (a well-proportioned young man), while the concealed rear reveals the truth (an animal). In the context of theater, we use the word ‘backstage’ to describe what happens behind the stage. It is here – hidden from public view – that we find the technical equipment that enables the play to take place on the stage. These are the non-aesthetic conditions for work. On the stage we have the entrancing diva, backstage the untidy dressing table, etc. The Centre Pompidou has no façade, no front side. You look directly into the insides of Renzo Piano’s building: pipes, cables, bracing. What you see is not the mask that traditionally fronts a building, but rather what it normally hides, namely the technical structure. In front – the brilliant product, behind – the conditions and traces of work: with pictures the stretchers, the frame, the mounting, stickers, information on the exhibition venues – the rear, which Antwerp-born Cornelius Gijsbrechts painted as a still life as early as 1670.
About our exhibition: William Anastasi (US) has the outlines of a rectangle incised on the gallery’s wall with, inside the shape, the paint removed down to the masonry, the rear. John Beech (US) uses the rear side of a picture as the front side. Rob Scholte (NL) takes embroidered pictures found at flea markets, which Dutch housewives fashioned using patterns by Vermeer, Rembrandt and so on, turns them over, signs the back and exhibits them. All that you now see are threads hanging down, which viewed from up close form undefined patches of color, but from a certain distance reveal the image – as in an Impressionist painting. Charlotte Posenenske’s (G) Square Tubes, stereometric hollow bodies of sheet steel, provide a view of their interior. The white on Cécile Dupaquier’s (F) panel painting is scrubbed through down to the base of the picture. Similarly, Michael Reiter’s (G) objects show the front and rear at the same time – as do the large loops in Kirstin Arndt’s (G) mesh work – recalling the famous Moebius strip. On Franziska Reinbothe’s (G) picture the frame shimmers through the canvas. Gerwald Rockenschaub’s (A) work shows the large screw with which it is attached to the wall, unashamedly in the middle of the front. In Martina Wolf’s (G) video work the cardboard lid of a fast-food container suspended on a thread turns, alternately revealing its dull front coating and the shimmering aluminum-coated inside, on which the space behind the camera appears vaguely. All the exhibited works by international artists spanning several generations follow in the tradition of the Enlightenment inasmuch as they reveal what is otherwise hidden – the opposite of intended mannerist mysteriousness. Burkhard Brunn

Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts
(ca 1610 – after 1675)
1670. Trompe l'oeil
The Reverse of a Framed Painting
66,4 x 87,0 cm
SMK Statens Musem for Kunst
National Gallery of Denmark

The perfect illusion. The only painting in the world that has two reverse sides was painted by Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts in 1670. Born in Antwerp, but whose year of birth and death are unknown, the artist was a brilliant painter of still lifes, who mastered the art of painting illusions perfectly. The 17th-century trompe-l’oeil was produced for fun – we can imagine how Gijsbrechts’ reverse-side painting leaned against a wall in a gallery and how, puzzled, a curious art enthusiast could not help but turn it around the other way, only to be confronted once again with a reverse side. As early as the Renaissance, Florentine patricians took much enjoyment in creating playful deception, and here and there they were continued in their palazzi as illusionist architecture. Strictly speaking, perspective painting as a whole is an illusion, as it feigns three-dimensionality on a flat canvas, an illusion that only modern painting decisively shattered. Trompe-l’oeil painting becomes an exaggeration of general illusion when its naturalism moves the observer not only to observe, but also to take action – namely to rush up, say, to catch, with great presence of mind, a (perfectly painted) glass that appears to fall out of the picture frame. Indeed, Gijsbrechts became so famous for his “Steckbretter” generating such optical illusions that he was appointed to the Danish court. (Steckbretter are shelves affixed at eye-level in the entrances of Dutch townhouses used for quickly depositing odds and ends like letters, spectacles or keys, etc., objects that, in order to achieve the startling effect, were often painted beyond the painting’s edges.)
It is without doubt an affront to hold up to the observer the completely empty reverse of a picture rather than making his or her mouth water with a wealth of tasty delicacies, as was common with most still lifes. Yet going beyond the fun factor, this impudence has a certain depth in that it confronts the observer with emptiness, i.e. nothingness.
Here however, we need to consider that according to Western thinking, nothingness is equivalent to death. Seen thus, Gijsbrechts’ painting is an especially sophisticated version of the memento mori motif frequently featured in still lifes (usually a candle whose flame is dying, a wine glass that has fallen over, a rotting piece of fruit or – all too obvious – a skull), which reminds the observer when enjoying these earthly delicacies to think of the inevitable
end. Gijsbrechts’ painting follows in this tradition. Burkhard Brunn

Exhibition view. Gallery Sofie Van de Velde. Nieuw Zuid. Antwerp. 2017

Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts (ca 1610 – after 1675) 1670. Trompe l'oeil The Reverse of a Framed Painting 66,4 x 87,0 cm SMK Statens Musem for Kunst National Gallery of Denmark

Exhibition view. Gallery Sofie Van de Velde. Nieuw Zuid. Antwerp. 2017

Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts
(ca 1610 – after 1675)
1670. Trompe l'oeil
The Reverse of a Framed Painting
66,4 x 87,0 cm
SMK Statens Musem for Kunst
National Gallery of Denmark