Nele Tas

Past Friday 03.10 Nele Tas came to do surveillance at Tangents. She hadn’t seen yet the expo and so we talk long about it. She has also organized the art exhibition Temporary Cities in Lokeren. Nele is now sharing her living time in between Berlin and Belgium. At the moment she’s busy with new exhibition projects in the German capital.




These two untitled paintings to see at the expo are an example of her second series of paintings about the contemporary condition of inevitable belonging to the masses:

“In our society, all former role models of a sovereign individuality have disappeared: the authentic artist, the unworldly philosopher, the anchorite, the dandy, the adorable screen goddess. Belonging to the masses is our fate. In the words of Sloterdijk, isolation has perished, what remains is co isolation”.
(…)

“This condition of co isolation has always been in the focus of my pictorial expression and imagination. I chose to explore the subtle balance between being an individual and not being one by operating with a strained perspective from above. This perspective, namely, confirms the mutual lack of commitment. It isolates the spectator from the scene of the painting. It puts him both in the position of a voyeur and that of an outsider. The most characteristic result of this way of visualizing people from above is that the human face is no longer visible”.
(…)

“The first series of paintings registrates the collective movements of people in the city.(…) In contrast to the anonymous masses, the second series of paintings portray individual persons with whom I am very close (…) I attempt to catch their expressivity by painting their typical hairline. Strangely enough, this parting of the hair, this small part of the visible scalp, is an intimate and vulnerable part of the body to which one as a person does not relate directly”.

Nele is also having a group exhibition now in Mechelen togheter with many other artists: EXHIBITION Cultuurcentrum Mechelen / De Garage Van 27-9 t/m 23-11