Belgian artist Stijn Ank is showing two parallel solo exhibitions at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and Galerie Michael Janssen, both entitled FRESCO.
During his residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Ank enquired in depth into ‘the surface of the work’. Essentially his quest comes down to the question where the surface in his work ends and where space begins. The artist finds answers to this question in approaching a fresco as the translation of an act from which the artist is trying to make himself absent. The work itself activates space and makes us see that space afresh.
Using the back of a painting’s canvas as a mould in which layers of pigmented plaster are poured, a new kind of works appear which cannot be defined as sculptures, nor can they be called paintings.