Bram Van Meervelde

As a child, he dreamt of becoming a paleontologist. Of digging through eternal layers in search for shark teeth, the more the better, with the childish (Or, should it read: philosophical?) marvel at the number of sharks that must have swum there, at the banks of that very familiar, sharkless Scheldt. Amazed by and in adoration of how one can look in the present at the past. How something as ordinary as the Scheldt almost points directly to such magic. Endlessly stratified and dripping with stories, reality surpasses any fiction. The world is chaos, and even more: beautiful chaos. The beauty and virtuosity of a window covered in paint which has started to crackle and flake off after years and years of exposure to the elements almost moves one to tears, doesn’t it? The inner world, intuition, ideas, information read, … also belong to this chaos. As such a documentary about the genocide in Rwanda might end up on a tin plate. No old-fashioned duality, let alone dichotomy, between culture and nature, but not one mystical universe either. Not one or two realities, but multiple ones with in, underneath, behind (and some other prepositions) each other. By now, you might have guessed it already: like shark teeth in the Scheldt’s clay next to which the head of a little plastic doll once thrown overboard by a sailor’s child at the first signs of puberty. This radical plurality is also reflected in the techniques applied: paintings, drawings, forgings, photographs, tin plates, sculptures, … Not surprisingly, installations filled to the brim with individual work are a common and self-evident form of presentation for Bram Van Meervelde. Therefore, any analysis of Bram’s representations lead the spectator – for many: paradoxically enough – ever so further way from the ontology of his work. No division either (thus) between serious and playful. Humor is serious, and issues which are deemed serious/weighty are mighty funny most of the times. The CCTV cameras are in need of a microphone, aren’t they? Confusion creates clarity. Humor illuminates: more lumen, less weight. Intuition is a perfect compass for when you’re walking confident that coincidences don’t exist, but without having or being able to explain these non-coincidences. [Jasper De Rycker, may 2015]