‘TOXIC HAWAII’ / Victor Verhelst
at PLUS-ONE Gallery
About
The first solo exhibition by hybrid working Belgian artist Victor Verhelst at PLUS-ONE Gallery.
What we dit
Advisory, Technical (web3) support (Smart contract & NFT management), Co-production virtual presentation, Exhibition management, Scenography assistance.
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‘TOXIC HAWAII’ / Victor Verhelst
PLUS-ONE Gallery (South)
03.12.2022 - 08.01.2023
Vlaamsekaai 74
2000 Antwerp, Belgium -
Lead: Jason Poirier dit Caulier, Thomas De Ben
Exhibition assistance: Ayrton Eblé, Cas Heysse, Joost Delsard, Nathalie lauwereyns, Eva Vandekerckhove.
Production: Albe De Coker, Milo Profi, B&T textilia, Art & Frame Center, Dens.
Photography: Joost Joossen.
Exhibition text
WHEN COLOUR BECOMES SPACE
It is not easy to imagine history and the past other than in black and white. When I think of the past, I see people moving in black and white. I see images of a man on horseback chased by a feathered warrior, of tap-dancing people in suits looking the audience sternly in the eyes with frozen smiles, or of people bathed in sweat singing in front of a microphone and caught in the frame of a CRT television. Whether it’s a book, a newspaper, a comic, a print of a photograph or whatever, the thought of black and white is almost natural when evoking the past. Another curious fact is that when the night seeks us out, everything between dream and nightmare is just as much black and white. Even more intense is the image of a fire-vomiting volcano delineating the surrounding inhabitants as white solidified appearances against a background of smouldering black. As if the past does not tolerate colour. Colour as a privilege for reality now and the world of imagination. After all, when we imagine, an unbridled range of colours crackles.
Looking at Victor Verhelst’s work, it seems as if the man has never been in contact with black and white. Presumably he was brought up on pink mother’s milk, grew up among colourful wallpaper and to this day he arms himself against a colourless life with wax pastels and coloured pencils. Like a Don Quixote fighting the dark thought that colour might cast a shadow.
Victor Verhelst is already a cult figure of his generation who does not allow himself to be bound by rules and ploys. A graphic designer, illustrator, typographer, risographer, publisher and autonomous artist alike, he effortlessly manages to mash a toxic cocktail out of it where, above all, his obsession with colour dictates law and taste.
His characteristic colour combinations create figurative urban landscapes where the colours evoke an immersive experience like syncopated beats. Moreover, his combinations are uninhibitedly adopted in both digital and analogue stimuli where the latter seek vocal heights in his signature risography and were recently magnified in textile tapestry. His still young oeuvre is rapidly growing, unrelenting, it charms and intoxicates. Without hesitation, Victor welcomes us to the boiler room where the sculpture turns into techno and the floor is lava. The iris contracts, blood vessels open and the heart beats faster. There is excitement in the world of Toxic Hawaii, no need to sleep ...
“It was just a colour out of space
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a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.”
From ‘The Colour Out of Space’ by H.P. Lovecraft
